TECH: Making a Front Seat Mount in a Merc

Hi All,

Well, I got some time to finally install my '66 Thunderbird seats into my '51 Merc. Some of this info is particular to my build, but most of it is universal enough in nature that it could be adapted to most any application.

The problem I was having was that the '88 Lincoln Town Car flooring I am using would not accept the stock '51 Merc seats or the stock '66 Bird seats, and I didn't want to use the way-too-comfy-but-totally-wrong '88 Lincoln power seats.

I needed to figure out a way to mount those T-Bird seats. The biggest obstacle was that I wanted to mount them to the stock Lincoln floor, yet the '66 seats were quite a bit narrower than the bolt pattern already in the floor...and the rear mounts were angled studs.

The solution?

After much thought, I came up with the best solution being to build a new seat frame, weld that to the '66 seats, and still keep them a bolt-in. Follow along as I show you how I did it. You may be able to use some ideas in your own build.

First, I needed to figure out just how much narrower the seats were. Turned out, quite a bit. The floor mounts were about 17" apart in width, while the seats were only 13". Here's the underside of the driver's side T-Bird seat. The tracks are relatively narrow, and they are made to have studs screwed into them that originally poked through the underside of the T-Bird floor. That wasn't going to work here, so I removed them, and cleaned up the base:



Next, I measured the floor pan, and cut some square tubing to length. I cut the fronts at an angle, mostly for aesthetics:



Here they are in position on the floor pan. You can see I made a cardboard template to serve as a guide for the width of the T-bird seat track (it was 13 inches wide.) I used this to evenly space my mounts:



Here is the first issue. I wanted to use the stock mounts, so the hole in the floor pan needed to mate somehow with the new rails I'd just fabbed. Here is the front:





Here is the rear mount, notice the angle that would have to be accommodated:



For the front mount, I made a simple cardboard template that I could transfer to metal, for positioning:




I took some scrap tubing, sliced it up, and made the front brackets:



Here it is clamped in place for mock-up:



I cut some cross bars for support, and made the same style brackets for the rear. unfortunately, when I clamped it all together and leveled it-- the rear brackets were not long enough, and I was also worried about their strength:







So instead, I scrounged around my scrap bins, and found this:



You Merc guys will recognize this piece, I cut them both off my car back when I fit the body to the new frame.

I sliced it up and found I could use one of the original holes it it to mount it to the floor; it was plenty sturdy, and long enough to span the longer rear mount to floor distance I needed:






Each bracket would yield one rear set of mounts, so these two brackets from the Merc would work for both front seats:



I cut them a little long, clamped them in place, bolted them to the floor, and leveled out the entire assembly:



Here they are, cut to fit, installed, and tack-welded in place:




Here is the finished seat mounting frame, ready to set the T-Bird seat on for a trial fit:



I placed the T-Bird seat on the frame I just made, and slid the tracks all the way forward. This way, when I weld the T-Bird seat to my seat frame, I'll have the full range of motion to be able to slide it back and forth for a comfortable driving position:



I clamped it to my new seat frame to see if it was too high, too low, or too far forward:





It turned out to be just right:



I took a seat in it to check out my driving position. It was perfect for me, with a slight adjustment of the the slider. All that is left now, is to weld the T-Bird seat to the seat track I made...and of course, duplicate this all over again for the passenger seat.

Looks like I have some headroom for a chop:



The wrap-around rear seat is next. Most likely, it will be a combination of 66-T-Bird (back) and '88 Lincoln (bottom)...

More later!

 

Nice. I like the look of those seats.

 

Thanks John!

It's a pretty popular swap for the Merc crowd...unfortunately, I think it's easier if you have the stock floor pan. I had to get creative to make them work.

The beauty is in the wrap around style rear seat that the T-Birds had:



I'll have major surgery to the stock T-Bird seat bottom to fit my pan, so I may have to just adapt the upholstery style to the stock Lincoln bottom rear seat to match the uppers...

 

Glad to see you are back at it! Seats look great. I love those t-bird seats. I put a set in my 64 Pontiac back in the mid eighties.....my fab skills were pretty lacking and the install is not as slick as yours and will be redone someday when I redo the car.

Now that you have a mounted seat, how far away are you from a test drive?

 

Thanks Dave...not too far from a test drive, I was using this opportunity to get a quick project accomplished to get me back to work on the car. Figured at least with a set I can make vroom vroom noises and turn the wheel back and forth.

 

Looks good MercMan. Looks like you have accomplished alot recently. Was that Merc Dash hard to put in with all the old town car instruments? I notice most people use the modern dash with your type of build, the stock look dash looks great.

Shooting for a test drive this season?

 

Only 1/2 of the firewall was left from the Town Car, the Merc dash never was removed from the Merc shell...I'll have the stock gauges rebuilt eventually and hook them all back up. Speedo will be the challenge. I wanted to keep the old stuff.

Shooting to fire it up soon. I have to run all the fuel/brake lines and all new wires yet.