1977 Bucket Seat Tracks

This is the second set of late seat tracks I have dealt with. The others were out of a Monarch Ghia. Ford did some cobbling to make buckets work in cars with the catalytic convertor bulge. The seats were similar to LDO seats. The drivers side seat tracks are identical to earlier LDO units I have.

A big difference, though, is while LDO seats had very short tracks and likely had risers built into the seat frame (someone verify this please, I don't think the added height was all cushion), as opposed to the built up tracks and short seat frames in early Grabbers, the inboard riser on the passenger seat is removed to deal with the added height of the cat hump. That inboard track bolts directly to seat frame, and the outboard side of the frame has a riser.

This means that in order to make a standard bucket seat work with these, some sort of riser will need to be fabricated for the outboard side of the passenger seat. The height of this will be approximately 2.75 inches... I could not measure it as accurately as I would like. If working with a set of these, double-check level, but that ought to get you very close.

This would then mean that the height on both seats would be different. Not that noticeable unless you were really looking for it ... my wife and I have vastly different seat heights in our DDs. I have early buckets and LDO tracks in my Comet, and if you are a tall guy, the seat height works out well for a driving position.

I don't have a set of LDO seats to verify this with, but I suspect that 2.75 is the standard height of the riser on the frame. (again, if someone could please verify this). If so, then chopping it off the inboard side of the passenger seat and adding nutserts would be another solution. You would end up with a higher seating position, and seats that are level with each other.