Question: 1962 Corvette seat installation

[Tearloch]

I just bought my first Corvette a couple of weeks ago, and I am struggling with how the seats are attached to the car.

1. I have read on here that the seats are only held down by 2 bolts in the front of the seat, but that doesn't seem right (in my mind, at least). I know there are 2 front and 3 rear reinforcement plates under the body. The front bolts make sense, but the back end is where my trouble is occurring. Is there something that bolts down across the back of the seat using those 3 reinforcement plates? The drawings I have found don't make sense. As the car is now, there is nothing under the seat when I remove them.

2. The reinforcement plates I mentioned earlier are in pretty bad shape on my car, and I would like to replace them while I am in the process of having the seats out of the car. How are these attached to the body? Rivets? Pan head bolt from inside/nut underneath? Some other way?

Pictures would be great of what its supposed to look like under the seat (if anyone has them from a resto project).

I will apologize up front if I am getting some of my terminology mixed up. I have not been around classic cars in a long time, and have a lot of relearning to do.

 

[Tom Bryant]

Welcome to the CAC

The nut plates under the floor panel are held in place with flat head rivets that press down through the floor and into the nut plate. You may be able to obtain these from CSC Reproductions in Rocky River OH www.cscreproductions.com . They make a lot of these type of early Corvette parts. They don't show up in my catalog but it is several years old. Contact them if you don't see the nut plates. They would be easy to make. On my '59 there are seven of these that the seat track bolts to. There is one in the inside front and 2 at each of the other corners. The rear of the seat tracks bolt through a support place that is common across to both seat tracks.

On the '61/'62 the support plate is different. Only the support plate bolts to the floor; not the rear of the seat track. The support plate has a pocket on each side that the seat tracks slide into. When the front track bolts are installed the support holds the rear of the seat down in place. If you need the support plate CSC has it under part number B2497.

Attached is a scan from the '59 AIM. Note the rear support is different than yours but you can get the idea and see the nut plates and rivets.

Tom

 

[Tearloch]

Tom:
Thanks for the help. I thought I had the rear hold down figured out, and what you said matches up with what I thought was going on. I know that atleast half of the under body hold downs are rusted out, so I plan to replace them all. Have to pull the seats tomorrow to check what other parts I need. Funny enough, but the Corvette America video on installing the seat covers actually was what caused the lightbulb to go off on how it all fit together.

 

[Tom Bryant]

It sounds like you have it handled. If the nuts are not available they would be real easy to make. Just a rectangle of flat steel with a nut tacked to it and the rivet holes. GM used square head nuts but you could use a large flat washer and a standard nut in the meantime if you can't find them right away.

Tom

 

[Tearloch]

Just a little update:

I have all the parts that I needed. Car was missing the rear hold-down plate. I decided to replace all of the underbody reinforcements for the seat.

After getting one side all done, I can attest to the fact that using the original solid rivets would be impossible without the body being off the frame. Since this is not an original car, I wisely opted to simply bolt the underbody plates on. The original decision was made since I have never used solid rivets, but after getting under the car, there are a couple of spots where riveting would have been impossible (getting the nuts in there was hard enough).

 

[Tom Bryant]

I noticed looking under mine that it could be a major feat with the body on. I see no problem with the bolt in idea.

Tom

 

[Tearloch]

The other "trick" I came up with about half way through this job was to basically superglue the nylock nuts to the plates. This allowed me to only have to get a wrench on them from under the car while someone else drove the screws from the top. After spending about 15 minutes trying to get a nut on a screw that was under the exhaust, I came up with this brainstorm. After doing this, it only took about 10 minutes to install the new plates on the drives side. It took several hours to do the passenger side.

 

[Tom Bryant]

Great ideas come from frustration.