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Rebuilding Seat Tracks

A

AtlantaSteve

Active Member
Ok, so I spent Saturday building some brackets to adapt my 71 seats into my 66. Think it worked out pretty well, and I'll post a recap with pics when I get back to Atlanta and get off my butt to take the pictures.

But while I have everything apart, I want to completely rebuild the tracks. So I'm gonna bend the tabs (and pray they don't break) and pull the tracks apart. What should I do while I have them apart? I plan to wirebrush them down to bare metal, and prime and paint. What sort of paint should I use? I am interested almost none in looks and interested 100% in durability and rust protection. I also don't want to paint inside the roller tracks because I figure that paint would chip off and gum up the works, but I want to rust protect it well. I'm thinking maybe using gun blue in there? Is that a dumb idea? What SHOULD I use?

Do they even make replacment for the plastic parts inside, or do I just need to do my best to protect those while taking everything apart.

Finally, any special grease I should use, or is just some normal thick grease fine?

Thanks,

Steve
 
I sand blasted my tracks clean, then coated them with an Aviation primer. Finished them up with some rustoleum spray paint. Just some normal thick grease would work, i used some white lithium from a spray bottle. It seems to work well. I blasted, painted and lubed the tracks totally assembled, that way you dont have to worry about the inside so much. :craz. Im not sure how well the gun blue would work.
 
There was an article about this in Mustang Monthly or Mustang Times in the past year or so...
 
Gun bluing on the inside with 3-n-1 oil or white lithium and paint on the outside seems like a plan. Then again, I'm pretty sure the insides of the tracks are painted on my daily and it's held up fine for 200k miles, so that should be A-OK too.

I'm pretty sure you can buy the plastic sliders, I have a set, but I don't know WTH they came from. :rofl
 
It may be too late for the OP, but I wrote this on "the other forum":

Well, I figured it out. One does not have to flatten the tabs.

You extend the slide all the way to one end.

DSC00723.jpg


Then you smack the whole thing on a hard surface to jar the roller to the end

DSC00724.jpg


You can see it through the bolt hole here. This allows the slider to drop ever so slightly.

DSC00725.jpg


With a screwdriver between the bushing and the slider, you can pry the slider down just enough to disengage the tab on the bushing

DSC00726.jpg


and work it out from the inside with another small screwdriver.

DSC00727.jpg


It's tight, but it will work out without breaking it. I couldn't hold both screwdrivers and take the pics :) but you have to work both simultaneously to get the bushing out.

Once one is out, the other comes out in the same way, but much more easily. Take ther roller out.

After that you're home free. You rack the slide to the opposite end, and it will travel much farther with the first roller out, exposing the bushings which will come out easily. It just falls apart after that.

It all goes back together fairly easily. Working that last bushing in requires some patience and wiggling and working, but it does go in easily enough. Of course, there will be clean and lightly greased parts going back together, which helps. It also helps to take a small file and deburr the edges where you're going to jam the bushings back in. They tend to snag on the sharp edge going back in.

I tried this on three different tracks with equal success.
 
Nope, not too late! I moved on to something else and have the track sitting on the shelf waiting for me to get to it! Very much appreciated!!!
 
use the white lithium grease that you buy in a plastic tub & apply with an acid brush. its a slighly heavier body than the spray & will last longer.
 
This topic is awesome. I did the driver seat back in April and in 3 months forgot how I did it. The smacking the track to make the roller drop is a neat trick.
 
I just did the set of rails I picked up used the other day. They came from a mix of cars and one of the rails without the adjuster handles just fell apart. I thought I had a bad one but found out there were no stop tabs at the ends. It will be fine once installed but it is so nice when it all just falls apart........

For the rails to be so expensive new, it really does not take much to renew them. This is the fourth set I have done over the years.
 
Concur. Now that I know how to do it, I need to do them all. Between me and my dad, we probably have 4 more pairs to do.

No before pics, we all know how crummy they look, but here's the progress and done pics from the other day.

427_19_07_10_4_39_06_1.jpg


427_19_07_10_4_39_06_2.jpg


One thing to note, is that I used the Krylon 1613 (yeah, I know its a little too glossy now). Anyhow, last set I did I was impatient and probably put them together too soon, and found that the metal bushing was pulling up the paint. Which required me to pull them apart again and scrape the paint away from the wear area the bushing rides on.

This time I masked that area off, so the bushing will be riding on bare metal. With a little white lithium grease on there it won't get any rust anyhow.
 
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