to lower my front bucket seats, i have bought LDO tracks. today i tried to mount them and failed miserably. let me start off with the following: my car is a true GT with factory bucket seats. it has the reinforcements on the floor. it didn't come with the original seats, but with the original bucket seat tracks. somebody had welded two bars on and mounted recaro seats. i bought a set of 72 mustang high back bucket seats which fit the tracks and the holes in the floor perfectly. what went well was the following: i shortened the handle on the ldo tracks so it wouldn't stick too far out. you can make out the weld. fits and works perfectly. mounted the tracks to the seats with no issues. now what did go wrong? i fitted each track on the floor separately. lines up front to rear. no issues. but the tracks won't fit side to side. here's a shot of the passenger seat, inside track, front. the outside track is mounted to the floor. the bolt is off roughly an inch further to the inside: i found the difference looking at my bucket seat tracks. while the bolt is centered on the ldo track, the bucket seat tracks put the floor bolt a little to the inside. this shot is pretty much vertically down: so - what to do? i guess i could elongate the holes on the seat tracks and mount them further inside on the seat. but the bolt is centered and i'm afraid the track won't slide when the inner track hits the bolt. i could elongate the hole in the floor. but then the retaining nuts will hit the side of the reinforcements. what i will try is a mix of everything. with shaving off little bits here and there i'll probably gain enough to mount the seats. did anyone run into the same problems before?
i know, i just looked into Jeff's thread. he has a picture of his combo with him sitting in the car and smiling. maybe he can chime in and tell us what he did.
I can always go pull my LDO seats down off the shelf, and compare the seat tracks, if someone else doesn't give the answer first...Or is there a chance yours could be 4 door LDO tracks? I do have a set of those around here also...
would there be a difference in 2-door vs 4-door tracks? i don't know which car these originally came from. edit: ford master car parts manual shows the same part numbers for both body styles. i'll take some measurements when i am in the garage the next time.
Tody, let me look through some info that I have compiled on this ... I have some pics saved of Grabber seat tracks and for some reason, I think they were offset to place the seat more centered with the steering wheel. I don't think that would change the bolt pattern in the floor, though. In some other post here I have the measurements of the bolt pattern on the seats (which has been a Ford standard for most bucket seat many years since the 60s, with the exception of some Granada buckets I found). I may have measurements for the floor bolt pattern too. If not, there is a post about it, might be a tech article. A thought right away is the previous owner used the tracks to mount aftermarket seats ... maybe he redrilled a couple holes to accomodate that combo and welded the original holes shut, so maybe crawling under the car, may show some evidence of that. Aftermarket seats using the same bolt pattern as Ford did ... maybe, maybe not ....
i did some more research on my car today. inspected the floor, also dug through the old pictures. no signs any of the holes have been redrilled. it's safe to assume the tracks and the holes on the floor are original to the car. so i took some measurements. first, bottom of the bucket seat, left to right. just under 14 inches: exactly the same with the ldo tracks on - they have the bolt centered in the track: but then a huge difference with the bucket seat tracks, distance is suddenly under 13 inches: and this is why. the bucket seat tracks don't put the seat offset, but narrow the bolts. it's not centered in the track, but moves further inwards to the inner edge of the track on both sides: could it be that ford did not design the maverick with bucket seats in mind, but with a bench only? and when the tried to put in bucket seats they had to design the custom maverick tracks because the needed to use the outer mounting points of the bench? it would be great if someone could measure the with of the holes on a ldo seat! here's what i did in the meantime. i notched the holes on the ldo tracks slightly. still not enough, so i will notch the holes in the floor, too: i'll make sure to update this thread...
Wow ... that is annoying. With the outboard track moving the mounting point inboard to use the same holes as the bench seat, I will still say that is to put the bucket in a better location in front of the steering wheel. Like you, I am running highback buckets on LDO tracks. I just looked at the Comet, and the seat is about a 1/2" closer to the tunnel. There is easily 1" outboard that the seat could go, but 1/2" would square it up with the steering column. Unlike your combo, my inboard holes were drilled to match the seat/track combo, matching it to the existing bench seat holes, and that would account for the offset. My seats just clear the Versailles console added to the car. If the seat was moved outboard, that would be a bit better too. So ... armed with all this info now ... if you use a pair of existing holes and slot two of them, the seats will be 1/2" offset in one direction or another. Perhaps slotting all four holes 1/4" is the answer?
that' what i'm going to do. i crawled under the car today and saw that the outer front reinforcement bracket is actually wide enough for that. but i'll do that with the car on a lift...
I am still very interested if anyone out there can measure the bolt pattern on the bottom of an LDO seat. For that matter too, if someone could get underneath an LDO car and measure the width between seat track holes. If they are narrower, it would mean that they are an exception to what Ford has used as standard measurements for most of their bucket seats for several decades. I did find another exception in Granada/Monarch seats a while back. This would add a lot to the knowledge base here, and could be added to a couple of threads I have involving seats and tracks, etc. Probably should be all consolidated in one tech article to help steer others through bucket seat issues.
i got the seats mounted today. notched the floor holes 1/2" each, then the seats went in. as i trimmed the holes on each side, the seat is still centered...
Wouldn't swapping the inboard tracks from seat to seat have moved the pattern out 1/2 inch? I see you got it done but i'm just curious. Ohh crap you made me think too much.....nap time!!
Can't swap seat tracks from seat to seat ... outboard one has the release for the driver seat, inboard one has it for the passenger seat. Good to see you got it worked out, Tody. Wish I knew all of this before mounting my seats. I am not going to mess with them now, leaving them as is. Eventually, as I get closer to painting the car, the interior will have to go through some disassembly again, and I may tweak the holes in the pan one more time.
