fold down rear set ...to non fold down???

[Cythomas]

I have 1973 duster has a fold down rear seat, I have perfect seats out of a 1972 duster which are non fold seats.

Question has anyone changed a fold down seat car to a non fold seat car ?????

Any help, pictures will be appreicated

 

[jazak5]

just my 2c//if its like a barracuda its easy peasy /just make sure you take pics and grab every screw//if you can change spark plugs you should be good

 

[Big dummy]

The rear deck is cut deep for the fold down seat. You would still have a big gap and no place to hang the back from...

 

[72bluNblu]

I went the other way with mine, converted a non-fold down seat car to a fold down seat. I left the package tray without the giant cut out though, so I could keep my speakers.

You’d have to weld or maybe bolt in some kind of brace straight across where the package tray scoops in so that you’d have something to mount the seat to. You could likely leave most of the other brackets and bracing intact, it would all be behind the seat anyway.

You can see what I did to convert my car, is should give you some ideas as to what you’d need to add to get the seat mounted.

How To: Fold down seat conversion

 

[Cythomas]

I went the other way with mine, converted a non-fold down seat car to a fold down seat. I left the package tray without the giant cut out though, so I could keep my speakers.

You’d have to weld or maybe bolt in some kind of brace straight across where the package tray scoops in so that you’d have something to mount the seat to. You could likely leave most of the other brackets and bracing intact, it would all be behind the seat anyway.

You can see what I did to convert my car, is should give you some ideas as to what you’d need to add to get the seat mounted.

How To: Fold down seat conversion

Thanks yes I seen your post

 

[72bluNblu]

Thanks yes I seen your post

Well, I can say that if I was going to take a fold down car and use a non fold down seat I would basically do it the same way. I would add a 1" tube or similar as a brace straight across the front of the package tray and hang the seat hooks for the standard seat off of that. I added the brace on my car because I was making up for the structural reinforcement used by the fold down cars, but in your case the brace would be used as the support for the standard seat since you don't have package tray there. Depending on how permanent you want to make this change you could either weld it straight in, or add some flanges to the ends of the brace so it could be bolted into the package tray. And then either fill the gap with sheet metal or just buy a standard package tray board and set it over the top. If you did the bolt in method it would be really easy to reverse, if you welded the brace and then welded in the sheet metal to fill the gap it would be harder but not impossible. And I think you can leave most of the brackets, most of them won't be in the way if you remove the hardware that bolts on. You'd end up with a finished solution that looks a lot like my car does, since I didn't copy the scooped out package tray on my car. You wouldn't need to add the cross bracing or anything doing it that way either.

Now, if you wanted it to look like a factory non-fold down car, you'd have a lot more work to do. And you'd need a donor car for some of that stuff, since the cross braces aren't reproduced. I held on to mine for a long time, but I finally scrapped it when I moved.