Does anyone make seat foam for the early style Pantera seats?? I only see vendors selling foam for late 1972 seats with the pan frame.
Thanks
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Thanks. I did see that - unfortunately they don’t make foams for the early tube frames, which is what I need.
I may just have a local upholstery shop add some foam to the cushion.
The point is the early seats didn't use foam. That is why nobody is making it...
Right - but it is not impossible to make a foam insert - which is why I was hoping someone did. The volume is too low to bother designing/making a mold.
I used to work in a trim shop during college summers and they could make foam inserts for anything - which is what I'll pursue. Sitting on steel gets old!
Appreciate the info - thanks!
"The volume is too low to bother designing/making a mold."
YES
That is a very well done seat document by the way!!
Thank you!!!
SEAT & BELT TIPS
Tip 1: In spite of your difficulty in locating drop-in foam pads, early seats are stronger and more desirable. They can be made adjustable in rake by the simple means of extending the slots in the back-stays, and if you add knobs to the fastening bolts, they become manually adjustable on-the-fly. This adds a large degree of custom- comfort over stock or the '73-up one-piece seats which often crack their frame welds. Extending the seat-back slots also allows the seat back to fold almost flat, making the firewall upholstery panel much easier to remove for access to the engine front cover.
Tip 2: there are two different lengths of seat rails (some 2-1/2" longer) which correspond to welded nuts under the floor. Seats interchange to rails but the rails do not interchange to a car.
Tip 3: If your floor is distorted at all, fore/aft seat adjustment will be more difficult. Do NOT remove the aluminum stand-offs and bolt rails directly onto the carpet. It compresses when you tighten the rail bolts and puts a bend in the adjustment rails, causing sticking during adjustment. Tall drivers often make this mistake; cut slots in the carpet if you need more headroom and want to remove the stand-offs.
Tip 4: the inside drivers seatbelt end between the seat and console can be made to 'stand up' for more convenient buckle insertion. There are decorative plastic sleeves used on Ford & GM belts that stiffen the belt enough, and can be trimmed to size with scissors and painted with a rattle-can to match the interior.
Tip 5 OEM seatbelt buckles sometimes disintegrate due to being held together under spring pressure only by the outer plastic trim. When it stress-cracks, the whole buckle falls apart. Pantera Parts Connection in NV rebuilds such buckles on an exchange basis & maintains your cars originality.
Tip 6: all Ford & GM seat belts are bolted to the floor with metric thread bolts. Late US domestic cars & pickups use the same thread as Panteras but with spline-drive round-head screws. Take spline socket adapters and a ratchet wrench to the junkyard when looking for belt parts. Late round head screws either eliminate the often-lost plastic Pantera caps, or if yours are still around, the decorative caps fit better over round head screws (with RTV).
Tip 7: the plastic adjuster knobs on seat adjustment rails often get cracked from being kicked. The knobs are identical to those used on some Datsun cars & mini-pickups, or the vendors carry replacements.
Tip 8: its pretty simple to make a pair of seat mounting shims of 3" wide x 13" long x 1/4" steel or aluminum strap and reposition the whole seat sideways. This can remove most or all of the stock offset in the drivers seat position relative to the steering wheel, and by shifting the passenger seat outboard, taller passengers get a bit more leg room at full stretch.
Tip 9- The stock seat adjustment rails slide on rubber coated steel wheels. Over time the rubber flat-spots, forcing the wheels to slide rather than roll. This makes the flat spots worse and contributes to adjustment difficulty. Home made metal substitute rollers tend to rattle but hard plastic substitutes are easy to make and do not rattle. The vendors sell such things as well.
There are others for specific situations. Extra comfort & convenience for pennies goes a long way with slightly modified early 3-piece seats, without swapping the whole seat for some other high-priced brand that may have its own problems.
Bosswrench - Appreciate all of the tips.
I don't recall seeing any aluminum spacers when I removed the seats, but after replacing the old rollers with plastic, the seats seem to be moving fine after installing them.
I do plan on improving the driver side cushion - the seat backs and the passenger cushion aren't too bad so I will leave them alone.
I do like the look of the thin original seats from a design/style point of view. I feel that the big modern cushy seats (they do look comfortable!) that I see in some Panteras look out of place - especially given the minimal interior space.
They're about 1" square-ish and are between the steel floor pan and the seat rails, protruding through the carpeting on both sides. The front ones are slightly longer than the rears for a slight 'rake' and the seat bolts pass through them as-stock. Some of us had Mike Cook redo the early seats in leather with deeper side bolsters, and for us- since my wife Judy was a full foot shorter then I was, he recontoured the rearmost seat frame crossmember into a shallow horizontal curve so her tailbone didn't touch it and bruise. We both found Cook's seats comfortable enough to do full-tank runs (about 4 hrs) comfortably. Sadly, Mike passed away recently and his shop in Norco, CA is closed.
1" high - that seems like a lot. I'll see how the seats feel this summer and go from there. Pitching the seat up in the front a bit might be better for comfort.
I like your adjustable back idea - I'll look into that!
The aluminum seat blocks are approximately 1.0" x 1.2" x 0.5 inches thick. The stock rails don't work very well without them as stated above. As for foam, I am not sure where you would put it. The early seat is a tube frame with springs and a horse hair covering similar to C2 Corvette seat.
I am hoping to remove the horse hair and place a foam pad in the cushion area. The bolsters are fine for now.
A high density foam should work. I’m 5’10 so I have some headroom to spare for my buttocks!!
Remember, the seats are symmetrical so you can remove both seats, swap the bases and get the same effect as rotating your tires..The drivers seat is always in worse shape than the passengers. Remember to swap the seat rails, too.
I did evaluate the seats when I had them out to rebuild the tracks. The passenger side was only marginally better so I will concentrate on improving the existing driver seat.