For those of you on a budget, or those who just do not want to spend $700 dollars on some decent upholstery, I have decided to make this thread. Like it or not, seats are necessary and annoying to deal with and upholstery shops know that so they charge an arm and a leg. So, post your solutions for cheap seat/upholstery. I'll go first; a buddy of mine has had some old 1985 Mustang SVO seats sitting in his front yard for a couple months and he let me have them. I figured might as well, they are free and what the hell why not. Turns out, they fit perfectly. All I need to do is take off the 80s looking headrest and put a black seat cover over them and I have some good looking high-back bucket seats for my Duster. All in for $50.
My buddy has a right side Dakota seat in his race Scamp. Real comfy and there are plenty of Dakota's out there in the bone yards.
Lets look at this a different way. But first, Great on you for going green and repurposing those seats (even fords). However, you live in a land of litigation. In 1969 the federal law was applied to all passenger vehicles requiring mandatory head rest for the front seats. (actually only the out bound seats) Tell me. If I was a lawyer and you get rear ended....... I'll leave it there. If your car is 68 or older, you're fine. Hey, you guys with inspections back there on the east side of the world. Do they go this far or is it just mechanical safety? I know most guys don't realize they can be sighted for transporting fuel in their unapproved fuel cell even in a trailered vehicle. I edited this for the correct years. I went from memory and should have checked. Sorry, I was off by one year sort of. Cars built in 68 for the 69 model year would have been required. My 67 elcamino seats actually had provisions built in to the frames in preparation but no headrests were installed. They are now for safety.
As far as I know, as long as they look old enough nobody will really care. Some friends of mine have gotten their cars registered and titled without windshields, the seats themselves, and in one case, open headers. Just depends on what inspector you get. Some get that its an ongoing project and it'll get fixed eventually, and other inspectors will reject you if there is a crack in the windshield.
Now this is an idea that I can get behind because all I need to do is start a new thread showing what I have done to my duster so far. (it also has a 1965 mustang radiator because it was free.)
When Steve Saleen was re-doing mustangs in the late eighties, he had a yard sale of his take-off parts. I wanted a set of the 16"wheels, but the four lug version i needed were all gone. But there was a nice pair of brand new six way electric seats. Bought the pair for under $100. Probably gonna use em in a 57 chevy, but they have been sitting in a closet all this time. Also, scavenged a decent pair of honda buckets, from the dumpster at work, gonna have them recovered to match whichever car i put them in. I could probably clean em, and the would be servicable as they are, just wouldn't match.
I think that federal law was applied on January 1, 1969. Ive seen original early 69s without headrests.
