TECH: 40 Ford Coupe jump seats

After 17 years of being torn apart and moved from garage to garage, a good friend is helping me to build my 40 coupe. Since the car was taken off the road, my need for seats changed from two to one - then back to two, then to three...

After a bunch of digging at the wreckers - a set of rear jump seats from a Ford Ranger made their way home ($10.00).

To start with, the existing framing and parcel shelf of the business coupe was cut out and a new frame was built using thin wall square tubing. An enclosure for the seat was made using thin wall rectangular tubing.

The seat was mounted using a heavy piece of sqare tubing, and a small bracket was welded onto the seat base to add stability (I’m 250lbs and we played with this till I felt that the seat was sturdy)

Once everything was fit in place – an aluminum box was bent up and installed into the seat enclosure.

Detail on the base for the seat:

The finished seat with aluminum upholstery panel installed all around it – note how nice and simple the seat belts work out – their attached to the jump seat frame.


Here is a picture of one of the lower enclosures being pieced together. I have the good fortune of working with someone who can weld aluminum – this could be achieved with simpler tools I'm sure... Notice the fabricating juice which was necessary to get the job done.

And last but not least – here is a picture of the car and the flathead. The engine was built 10 years ago for the project - it was started for the first time about two weeks ago – it runs great!!!



another peice of interesting tech for another day is the cheap Pro-Comp billet distributor on the engine. It is a very nice peice purchased on Flea-Bay, which would NEVER have worked out of the box. It now works great - has a good curve in it - and uses a GM HEI module (mounted on the base of the distributor) to get the job done.

My many thanks to Bert for having the vision...

Tim

 

Excellent work, you have done a great update on the original style jumpseats which many 39-40 Coupes had. Some call them Opera Coupes but Ford never did.
Great job!! Seat belts and all!!