Today's Esprit job...
Discussion
Seats. Difficult to drive without them, I find.
Now the previous owner of my car must have been 6 foot 12, and evidently decided that removing the slides from the driver's seat would give him loads more headroom. So he did, and simply plonked the seat on the floor. No fixings, nothing.
My first thought was to simply whip out the passenger seat and transplant it, then fabricate some framework to relocate the driver's seat to the other side... after all, it doesn't really need to move, just be firmly fixed.
So I grovelled underneath the car - no mean feat when you consider my age and the fact that I'm circumferentially-challenged
- and applied spanner to nuts... the seat nuts, that is. Two of them promptly sheared, the other two rounded. So it was out with the angle grinder: 20 seconds and the seat lifted out.
The bolts that hold the slides to the floor were welded to the slides. Not a problem to fix, but the overall condition of the slides led rapidly to another plan:
Way back in the mists of time, I had a similar problem with my first TVR (a 1980 Tasmin). Someone donated a couple of seats that were claimed to be ex-Austin Metro (a car probably unheard of in the USA: it would fit into the glovebox of some of their tanks
).
The Metro seats were wider than the TVR ones, but the longitudinal hole spacings were the same, so I thought something could be done. And it could. The TVR seat slides only had a 'latch' one one side, whereas the Metro ones latched both rails (more secure). The latches were linked by a grab rail that lets you adjust the seat: cutting a section out of that rail allowed the slides to be brought closer together to suit the TVR seats.
Now, the Lotus slides are the same as used on that TVR, so to bring the story to the present day, I figured that if I got some more Metro slides, it would be an easy task to modify them to suit the Lotus seats. But first I had to find a Metro...
Off to the scrapyards then. Soon found a Metro, but the seat design must have been changed 'cos these slides were different, the top half being part of the seat frame. No good then. I climbed around several other Metros with the same result, and came away with nothing more than a 2" glass shard stuck in my finger.
I proceeded to the next scrappy.
A Metro presented itself. This one had a different design of frame again... in fact, each seat had a different frame to the other, and neither was what I wanted! Doh.... by this time I was liberally smeared in blood from the cut finger. Then I spotted a Maestro (a car, for the US readers, so undesirable that the AMC Pacer would be a Bentley in comparison
).
I leaned in. Lo and behold, exactly the right slides! Which begged the question of whether the seats I was given all those years ago were actually Maestro and not Metro ones, but I digress.
I found an ape driving a forklift and enquired of him the requisite charge for the slides.
"It'll have to be a tenner, mate; the seats are wrecked without the runers..." Hmmmmm..... well, I can't see me finding them any cheaper, and I'm losing blood here... so I agreed.
I set to work with Torx bit and ratchet. Then I realised that the car still had all its relays and fuses in, so I figured they'd better come home with me, for safe keeping. Oh, and those courtesy lights might come in useful... so in between undoing bolts, I was stuffing my socks full of fuses and relays. 'Somehow' I managed to spray blood everywhere in this car: it looked like the Texas chainsaw massacre had happened again. It was over all the seats, the doors, across the windscreen and even on the headcloth Nobody will ever buy any trim from that Maestro, that's for sure...
I clanked my way to the decrepit caravan that serves as an office and proferred the courtesy lights as well as the slides, and amazingly ape-man let me have them 'thrown in'. I thought I'd better keep quiet about the bloodstained corpse with the Maestro badge, and made a sharp exit. Once back in the van I drove round the corner and emptied my socks of their plunder - although to be fair it was the wiper delay relay digging into my testicles that was causing me the most grief...
Back home and time to survey the haul:
Only one assembly is shown, of course. The springs that pull the latches into mesh also serve to keep the cross-bar locked to the latches (if that makes sense: gimme a break, I've been on the brandy!), and releasing the springs allows the cross-bar to be removed. Locate the approximate centre, chop 68mm out with a hacksaw and clean of the paint, then chamfer the mating ends and weld back together. Then realise that the digital camera batteries are flat so you can't take any more pics... dammit!
I dressed the welds with the bench grinder, degreased with isopropyl (ran around yelling after I got Isopropyl in my wound) and sprayed with satin black Smoothrite.
Whilst the paint was drying I turned my attention to the slides themselves. They are fixed to the bottom of the seat by two bolts each: on the Lotus seats there are some nuts simply welded to the steel frame
- this is what REALLY keeps you in place...
It transpired that the welded nuts are on slightly different centres to the Maestro slide mounting holes, so I considered a couple of options and in the end drilled each pair of slides slightly differently. So the slides on one seat will be further forward than on the other.
There is a good reason for this: the slides allow 9" of fore-and-aft movement, but until I mount the seats I won't know where this 9" is in relation to the steering wheel. Having the frames different means I can pick whichever gives me the best range of adjustment for the driver; the passenger will just have to make do
UPDATE:
Right, got some more batteries for the camera: here's the modified frame showing the section that was cut out of the cross-bar (lumps in the paint are drips, dammit
) :
and here is the frame trial-fitted to the Esprit seat (only two bolts holding it, so it's a little skewed - the paint was still wet!):
The holes in the lower half of the slides, incidentally, line up perfectly with the holes in the Esprit floor...
Ian
>>> Edited by wedg1e on Sunday 21st March 13:53
Now the previous owner of my car must have been 6 foot 12, and evidently decided that removing the slides from the driver's seat would give him loads more headroom. So he did, and simply plonked the seat on the floor. No fixings, nothing.
My first thought was to simply whip out the passenger seat and transplant it, then fabricate some framework to relocate the driver's seat to the other side... after all, it doesn't really need to move, just be firmly fixed.
So I grovelled underneath the car - no mean feat when you consider my age and the fact that I'm circumferentially-challenged
- and applied spanner to nuts... the seat nuts, that is. Two of them promptly sheared, the other two rounded. So it was out with the angle grinder: 20 seconds and the seat lifted out. The bolts that hold the slides to the floor were welded to the slides. Not a problem to fix, but the overall condition of the slides led rapidly to another plan:
Way back in the mists of time, I had a similar problem with my first TVR (a 1980 Tasmin). Someone donated a couple of seats that were claimed to be ex-Austin Metro (a car probably unheard of in the USA: it would fit into the glovebox of some of their tanks
). The Metro seats were wider than the TVR ones, but the longitudinal hole spacings were the same, so I thought something could be done. And it could. The TVR seat slides only had a 'latch' one one side, whereas the Metro ones latched both rails (more secure). The latches were linked by a grab rail that lets you adjust the seat: cutting a section out of that rail allowed the slides to be brought closer together to suit the TVR seats.
Now, the Lotus slides are the same as used on that TVR, so to bring the story to the present day, I figured that if I got some more Metro slides, it would be an easy task to modify them to suit the Lotus seats. But first I had to find a Metro...
Off to the scrapyards then. Soon found a Metro, but the seat design must have been changed 'cos these slides were different, the top half being part of the seat frame. No good then. I climbed around several other Metros with the same result, and came away with nothing more than a 2" glass shard stuck in my finger.
I proceeded to the next scrappy.
A Metro presented itself. This one had a different design of frame again... in fact, each seat had a different frame to the other, and neither was what I wanted! Doh.... by this time I was liberally smeared in blood from the cut finger. Then I spotted a Maestro (a car, for the US readers, so undesirable that the AMC Pacer would be a Bentley in comparison
). I leaned in. Lo and behold, exactly the right slides! Which begged the question of whether the seats I was given all those years ago were actually Maestro and not Metro ones, but I digress.
I found an ape driving a forklift and enquired of him the requisite charge for the slides.
"It'll have to be a tenner, mate; the seats are wrecked without the runers..." Hmmmmm..... well, I can't see me finding them any cheaper, and I'm losing blood here... so I agreed.
I set to work with Torx bit and ratchet. Then I realised that the car still had all its relays and fuses in, so I figured they'd better come home with me, for safe keeping. Oh, and those courtesy lights might come in useful... so in between undoing bolts, I was stuffing my socks full of fuses and relays. 'Somehow' I managed to spray blood everywhere in this car: it looked like the Texas chainsaw massacre had happened again. It was over all the seats, the doors, across the windscreen and even on the headcloth
Nobody will ever buy any trim from that Maestro, that's for sure... I clanked my way to the decrepit caravan that serves as an office and proferred the courtesy lights as well as the slides, and amazingly ape-man let me have them 'thrown in'. I thought I'd better keep quiet about the bloodstained corpse with the Maestro badge, and made a sharp exit. Once back in the van I drove round the corner and emptied my socks of their plunder - although to be fair it was the wiper delay relay digging into my testicles that was causing me the most grief...
Back home and time to survey the haul:
Only one assembly is shown, of course. The springs that pull the latches into mesh also serve to keep the cross-bar locked to the latches (if that makes sense: gimme a break, I've been on the brandy!), and releasing the springs allows the cross-bar to be removed. Locate the approximate centre, chop 68mm out with a hacksaw and clean of the paint, then chamfer the mating ends and weld back together. Then realise that the digital camera batteries are flat so you can't take any more pics... dammit!
I dressed the welds with the bench grinder, degreased with isopropyl (ran around yelling after I got Isopropyl in my wound) and sprayed with satin black Smoothrite.
Whilst the paint was drying I turned my attention to the slides themselves. They are fixed to the bottom of the seat by two bolts each: on the Lotus seats there are some nuts simply welded to the steel frame
- this is what REALLY keeps you in place... It transpired that the welded nuts are on slightly different centres to the Maestro slide mounting holes, so I considered a couple of options and in the end drilled each pair of slides slightly differently. So the slides on one seat will be further forward than on the other.
There is a good reason for this: the slides allow 9" of fore-and-aft movement, but until I mount the seats I won't know where this 9" is in relation to the steering wheel. Having the frames different means I can pick whichever gives me the best range of adjustment for the driver; the passenger will just have to make do
UPDATE:
Right, got some more batteries for the camera: here's the modified frame showing the section that was cut out of the cross-bar (lumps in the paint are drips, dammit
) : and here is the frame trial-fitted to the Esprit seat (only two bolts holding it, so it's a little skewed - the paint was still wet!):
The holes in the lower half of the slides, incidentally, line up perfectly with the holes in the Esprit floor...
Ian
>>> Edited by wedg1e on Sunday 21st March 13:53
wedg1e said:
Once back in the van I drove round the corner and emptied my socks of their plunder - although to be fair it was the wiper delay relay digging into my testicles that was causing me the most grief...
Ian
Ian,
Truly innovative solution! Good Job!
This bit above though...a little too much information! Certainly not the best mental picture I've had all day!
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