Day 51

Seat assemblies! These are relatively straightforward assemblies. The headrests for the front bucket seats are pretty easy to put together. The tricky part are the latch assemblies that go on the bottom. There are several small parts that have to come together just right to work together. Along with that there is tension in the system created by a pair of springs that makes it easy to misalign things as you work to rivet it all together. After they are finished the two halves come together.

There is much for involvement with the rear bench seat. especially because it has a split backrest. You begin with building the bottom framework. It does not have a single sheet of metal like the front. Rather it is an intricate frame that is made. Once it is completed you build the rear back rests. We ran into an issue with a pair of missing channels but were able to get them coming quickly from the factory. Once they showed up, we were able to complete them. The back rests also are a framework-built assembly. Each half has a latch system that are built into them for locking them into place in the canopy, as well as locking with each other.

After the back rests are finished, we then join the parts with the piano hinge. We did run into a problem with the hinges. How the build manual shows the orientation of the hinge does not allow the seats to fit correctly in the canopy. So after we drilled them back off, we were able to get them to fit properly.