manual seat track conversion, working on this now, anyone else do this yet?

[v8only]

Well, sick and tired of the power seat motors on these things, and sick of having every car I come across having a bad motor, I decided the best thing to do is to convert over to manual seat tracks.

I "heard" the tbird 89-97 had a manual seat track option, so I headed to the junkyard....

YEA RIGHT! I must have found 10-12 tbirds at least in this yard (big yard) and every one of them had power seat tracks.....

AND THEN, the poor mans mercury couger was sitting there staring at me looking very sad.

Open the door, manual seat tracks, and same floor bolting pattern as the tbirds and mark viii (it's still an mn12 car)

so I yanked out the manual tracks from the seat.

I'm going to start converting my seat over in an hour or two, and I'll take pictures and weigh the two. The weight difference between them I think is gonna be pretty substantial.

Looks like there may be some converting and some being creative to make the m completely fit. I didn't see too many posts on this yet, so I'll report back with my failure/success in a couple of hours

 

[Don Pfau]

Very interesting. I'm tring to cut wieght in mine.

 

[Lownslowlsc]

I converted my 98 marquis to 99 leather/power tc seats, 99tc seats into a cvpi (manual) and 03 marquis(leather/power) seats into a 98. All diff types of power/manual confiurations. Putting your existing seats onto the couger track shouldn't be all that difficult.

You'll have to use the manual recliner bracket from the couger on the m8 rear frame on the right side. Take the manual track off the couger seats and see how it matches up on the bottom of the m8 seat frame. If all is well bolt her in. I'm just giving you a little bit as they are 2 diff types of cars/types of seats. There will be bolts that might be tricky to find ect..

You can do it.

 

[v8only]

thanks for the motivation...I'll modify the mark viii frame if need be.

I was tempted to grab the entire couger seat...that thing was so freaking light compared to my lincoln seat it wasn't funny. It was blue material though, and it wouldn't look so nice in a mint black leather mark viii lol.

the manual seat tracks weigh in at 23.5 pounds...so far it "looks" like mostly everything will be plug and play...I'm thinking, as you mention, the manual recline mechanism may take some creativity.

Still waiting for the kids to go down to get started.

 

[micahs97m8]

This could be interesting for those who want to lighten the load and never worry about bad tracks again. Do you have a good black switch cover? If you decide not to mount it, I need one bad!

 

[v8only]

my black switch cover is tore up pretty bad... ...though I'm keeping everything in case I want to swap back...

OK, I'm mid process now, and so far, everything is straight forward.

I've got the manual recline mechanism bolted up. Both the manual and power recline mechanism have the exact same mounting holes...I actually could have kept the power recline mechanism and bolted it to the manual tracks, but I figured that would be lame. BTW, the power recline arm weighs in at 6 pounds, the manual weighs 5 pounds. The manual recline bar bolted right up with the addition of a few washers to space it out a little. I'm onto the tracks now. I'm really pretty excited about the manual tracks, it's dead realiable, and not something that's super noticeable, at least visually.

The weight difference?? Not as much as I'd thought, but I guess to someone who's "hardcore" anything counts...

The full manual setup actually weighed in a little less than previously thought, as I had to take off a seat belt mechanism...21 pounds for the manual setup, and 27 pounds for the power setup....so 6 pounds. If you were to convert both sides, you'd save 12 pounds. Is it worth it soley to convert for weight savings?? HAHA, I know some hardcore fox people who pull the padding out from the bottom of the carpet just to save .5 pounds, so to some it may be worth it.

I'll weigh the entire seat when I'm finished.

 

[v8only]

and failure.

At least my failure may help someone else out.

The seat tracks that bolt to the seat frame are different. The mark viii's seat tracks curve inward toward the front of the seat, and the couger tracks are straight...it's not even close to where I could modify and drill holes, so I'm kind of at a standstill.

Man it's the absolute lamest thing in the world to not be able to drive a seat because of a seat motor assembly. If I get any brilliant ideas, I'll update. To add to the lameness, the mark viii seatbottom is plastic, so I'm not sure that I'm comfortable drilling through it and putting a bolt in another location

 

[v8only]

I may be back on track, but I'm getting burnt out for tonight.

seems the studs for the seat rails on the bottom of the seat is nothing other than a stud with a lock washer that will actually pop out of the plastic, so now I've just got to carefully drill, measure, and relocate the studs on the seat bottom...so the bottom seat cushion needs to come off. Man this keeps getting more involved.

 

[marco]

Wouldn't it be easier to just grab the cougar/t-bird seats and swap the mark's foam and cover over to the manual seat? It's what I was thinking of doing.

 

[chris2523]

what about SHO seats? i hear the taurus has the same floor pattern for bolting in seats.

 

[v8only]

it could be, but I'm very shy on funds right now, and I didn't want to pay the price for the entire seat at the j/y and find out possible that it could be the wrong seatback or seat bottom.

I've got everything all set in the car right now, all except the front two seatframe to seat rail bolts that don't line up, and I've decided to continue with the conversion. I'll take some additional pictures, but what I'm going to do is have my friend weld up a little plate on each side of the seat rail, so that the mounting point is essentially brought in an inch or so on each side in front, then drill a hole through my mounting plate. There is just the perfect gap between the rail and seat frame to get a piece of metal in there, and safely weld it up. I'd prefer to do it that way rather than relocate the studs in the plastic seat bottoms...only because it's plastic, and I don't want to chance having it tear out if I do it incorrectly.

what about SHO seats? i hear the taurus has the same floor pattern for bolting in seats.

this I have not heard until now, of course finding sho seats could be fun. Next time I'm at the j/y I'll look at the taurus seats...I'm so close to having this done, that really in the end it's going to prove to not have been to bad, and I won't have modified anything that can't be returned to stock if I feel like doing so.

hey, and if all else fails, I'll just bring a car battery on a dolly and walk around to each tbird and mark viii in the junkyard and power them up one by one until I find a damned seat rail that functions.

 

[v8only]

well, what an adventure. I've got it all installed now, and the car is up and going again, with manual seat tracks....

I wanted to leave the seat itself as stock as possible in case I want to revert to the power motor setup again in the future. For this reason I didn't swap the seat bottom, or redrill the studs on the bottom.

I chose to take the brackets to my friend. I measured and cut steel brackets, which I had him then weld in the spot needed to extend out my mounting flange. After he did that, everything was a straight up bolt on affair, with the exception of the right side bolt that goes between the bottom and the seat top, the pivot bolt. I just had to add a nut on the backside. My new brackets are as strong or stronger than something the factory would have added, and they sit exactly flush to the bottom of the seat.

The end result is a seat that slides forward and backward super quickly, and it feels factory. The seat back pivots with ease with the manual lever.

Only two problems I see is the side plastic piece, or the lack of it now, and the fact that a couple of the seat upholstery snap locations are missing now, so parts of the seat material aren't pulled as snug as they could be.

Pretty damned minor though, compared to how much I love these manual seat tracks.

this is a shot of the rails with freshly welded brackets

after a little paint, you almost can't tell they're modified

and the final product with the manual seat tracks installed onto the bottom of the seat. Since the couger rails are a direct bolt on to the mark viii floorpan, no other mods are needed

 

[Big Mike]

Pics in car! Now! =)

 

[v8only]

i'll get some pics tomorrow.

It looks as could be expected...a seat without the side plastic cover on it. Looks alright for not having the cover. I could have spent some more time, and I may still yet to find one and adapt one to get the finished look, but I just had to get the car going.

 

[98lincmk7lsc]

Pics???

I'm sure it's too late, but I just happened to find a good working power seat track today...