Day 66

Finished assembling the front seats today. There were a few tricky parts, but all in all same together pretty well.

The headrests were a pretty straight forward process. Lots of little channels that had to be placed. Some of them we cut and in such a way that you could make them curve around the edges. Just had to make sure all the rivets were able to go in without bending a tab.

The seat bottoms had 24 holes each that needed to be countersunk with a countersinking bit. This way the countersunk rivets would be flush once pulled, allowing a smooth surface for when the seats are upholstered. Once the correct depth is set with the guide, the rest go pretty quickly. You’re able to go back with one of the rivets that will go in the holes and check that they will all be flush before clecoing the plates that are to be riveted.

The trickiest part of this build was the slide pins for the bottom of the seat that allows you to slide the seat toward and back. There are springs that provide tension to the slide pins. The directions are a little unclear. They don’t show where the carter pins are to be placed. We followed the book as outlined, and thankfully noticed something was amiss before it was riveted all together. (This is why we’re in the habit of clecoing everything together first.) We also did not have any narrow walled sockets to tighten the bushings that the cable hooks to for the pin handle. We ran over to another shop and we’re able to quickly get these two bolts tighten. Once the whole assembly is Cleco’ed, you pull them out one at a time to place a rivet, because some are under pressure from the spring and cable mechanism. After the bottom portion is riveted, it gets Cleco’ed to the bottom of the seat where it is then riveted one cleco at a time as before.

After riveting the slide pin assembly to the bottom of the seat, the hinges are assembled and placed to join the back and bottom portions together. A couple of the holes were not quite the correct size and need to be slightly adjusted. Loctight was then applied to the hex bolts and the front seats were completed until time to upholster them.