1966 Ford Galaxie 500 XL Refurbishment : 072 Front Seat Assembly & Rear Metal Package Shelf


2023, November 14

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Front Seats Restoration Part 6

I repaired one seat track already and this is the picture of the second one. So I check to make sure the seat tracks are flush with the floor braces, level with respect to each other and the seat holes are in square. Then I used 4130 TIG welding rod (lord this stuff skyrocketed in price) and TIG'd the pieces back together mostly whilst attached to the floor. 4130 rod is a good alloy that resists cracking from constant flexing. I made the weld wide and hoping for good flow into parent material to imbue this property in the molten zone so no extra plates are needed. Plus this 4130 rod is harder and stronger than ordinary Er70.

Here's the finished repair on one of the tracks. You get the idea for the other one. Also the extreme weight of the individual splayed the tracks U section apart so I had to squeeze it back together. These poor things were so abused.

All back together, greased and the cross linkage adjusted.

Holy smokes (quite literally outside) these puppies are done. These were hideous to do and such a time vampire.

Just to recap what these looked like.

What a pile of ...........

This concludes the seats.

My better half tackled the package shelf.

All the insulation just disintegrated that was glued to it.

The top needs some scrubbing. Now this is interesting as I have seen '66 gal 500 XL's and 7 Litre packages with a pressboard one of these and it they just fall apart. This is metal one. It's nice in that it's easily cleaned and painted but geeze will you crack the base of your skull on that high rear crown behind the seat if someone rear ends you. So just put the people you don't like in the back seat .

It came out pretty good in the new colour. Still have to sort out the emblem in the middle of the speaker grill area, but otherwise this is done.

Continued in next post.

Click here to continue to part 73