SAGGY BOTTOMS?

With age, your bottoms may have sagged. This makes sitting in a Corvair bucket seat unpleasant.

Being a frugal or parsimonious person I have developed two simple mods for 60-66 Corvair sagged bucket seat bottoms. In combination, the mods improve the angle of the seat back and firm the seat bottom giving your tender gluteus maxima a firm but gentle lift. Vision over the steering wheel is improved also.

Supplies needed:

2 aluminum blocks, ¾ in. thick, 1 1/2” x 2” (Home Depot?) drill a centre hole approx. 5/16 inch diameter

Two grade 8 bolts 1 ½ long ¼ by 20 thread, match the thread to the original bolts which you have removed. (Home Depot or CTC or Home Hardware)

2 large washers, wood screws

1/2 “ spruce plywood or whatever has been left over from some earlier genius work approximately 10” x 16” (Home Depot otherwise)

A block of extra FIRM mattress foam 4” thick 10” x 15” (custom cut in the Foam store on Fairview in Burlington)

MODUS OPERANDI

Remove the seat being modified from your Corvair. Perform any cleaning that you deem necessary. Look for a build sheet. If found, preserve for future reading and decoding.

Modify the plywood to fit between the seat rails. Using a jig saw, one curved section per side will need to be sliced on the 10” dimension. Adjust/cut as necessary to fit the plywood onto the sides of the rails. If your plywood is too narrow it will fall out of the rails…..an interference fit is required.

Use at least 2 wood screws 1/2” long and fasten the rails and plywood. GM left convenient holes for this very purpose.

Stuff the foam into the gap between the plywood and the seat springs. Avoid cutting your hands on the screws installed above.

Return seat to the car but install the aluminum blocks under the front “pickle forks” of the seat rails using the two new 1 ½” long bolts through the centre holes and washers. The original seat bolts are now surplus.

The above mods take close to 3 hours the first time you make them.

Enjoy driving your Corvair. Longer runs allow for easier back and backside survival.

CAUTION #1: You will lose some toe room under the bucket seats for back seat passengers.

CAUTION #2: The method/manner you enter the driver’s seat may need to be adjusted as the clearance between the bottom of the steering wheel and the top of the seat has been reduced.

If you would like some further details please email njimdl@gmail.com.

SAGGY BOTTOMS?ALTERNATE SOLUTION

Find a replacement seat!

So far I have tried 4 different bucket seats as follows:

Datsun 240 Z (64 coupe)

Ford Escort (65 sedan)

Toyota Camry (64 sedan)

Honda EX coupe (63 coupe)

Two of the above were reupholstered before installation so they matched the interior.

Two (Camry and Honda) were not reupholstered but were chosen for their colours which came close to the factory interior.

Datsun buckets may have come from our Spring Swap at John Gray’s home. They were reupholstered in red vinyl and cloth and installed in my white ’64 coupe. The seats needed custom adapter plates so that they could be bolted into the Corvair bolt holes in the floor. That coupe came to the Sturbridge Convention from Montreal. 3 point seatbelts were installed with the seats.

Ford Escort seats came from a sedan that was to be scrapped. The interior was in very good condition. Many mods were made to get these seats into the sedan including cutting and welding to the Ford seat rails. The 3 point belts were in the sedan and had been installed in California by a previous owner.

Toyota Camry buckets have been installed in the ’64 sedan. Aluminum channel, 2” square, 3” long was used to make “adapters”. Blue vinyl bolsters and factory blue cloth make these seats presentable in the blue sedan. 3 point seat belts may appear in the future. The adapters are too high and a shorter solution is being planned.

Honda cloth bucket seats came from another scrap vehicle. I used a Wagner steam cleaner and many clean micro- fibre cloths to extract deep dirt. Some steel angle brackets were cut and drilled for the front attachments. Rears require two flat steel plates 2” by 3” drilled to accommodate Honda rails and Corvair floor holes and/or floor stud. Seat height did not require any adjustment.

The 3 point Honda seat belts will not easily fit into the coupe as they interfere with access to the back seat. Another solution, perhaps an aftermarket belt, may work. Check Corvair Center for a U.S. source.

Replacement bucket seats offer a better seat back angle. Longer runs are comfortable. Arriving at the destination (DACC Homecoming) is a pleasure as the exit from the Corvair is easy and standing and walking pain free.

Any drive is improved as your vision over the steering wheel has been raised to a safer level. Night vision is better. Vision from behind a sun visor is improved as well. Stop lights may require some head cocking.

Lap belts work in all of the applications above however I really want three point belts in my closed vehicles. Early coupes have a convenient hole in the B pillar waiting to be used to mount the shoulder bracket.

Comfort, convenience, and safety but originality is sacrificed.

See the email address above for any questions that need to be discussed.

Jim Diell

The aluminum brackets on the left were used under Toyota Camry bucket seats.

Offset holes were drilled to accommodate the transfer from Corvair to Camry. Height is an issue and these brackets need to be replaced with a channel of lesser height, perhaps 1 ½”.

Right angle iron bracket shows the offset to accommodate the Honda

Seats are aligned and held in place with vice grip pliers. This is somewhat awkward to do in this manner but much easier and more accurate than trying to measure for brackets when the seat is in the car.

Two Honda seats will leave room between them for a custom console.

Have to have a secure place for two Tim’s cups