My 1970 GMC “Project Splice”

[Kronald_70GMC]

Wow, it's been a while since I've worked on the truck. Page 3?! Haha as usual, summers around here are crazy busy with lake time and yard work, I'm sure everyone can relate. Anywho, I finally had a spare minute and decided 2 months is long enough! So I went out to the shop this afternoon and finished up the weight loss program for my driver's seat brackets. Next will be fabbing up the remainder of the bracket so that I can actually bolt it in place. Feels good to get something done!

[Kronald_70GMC]

I made a bit more progress tonight with seat brackets. I had some 1/2" solid steel lying around and figured that it will be as good as anything for this. I have decided that drilling through the seat supports would give me the best possible strength. Now I plan to weld some 1/4" plate tabs to the rods which will give me my mounting points. I think the general idea is coming along nicely, let me know what you guys think.

[Kronald_70GMC]

Today I fabbed up a piece of flat stock as a mounting plate. I'm thinking it is looking a little bit large though. I got some input from a buddy and I may end up narrowing it where the bolt goes through and leaving the back where it will be welded to the rod wide for strength.

[Kronald_70GMC]

I resized my mounting tabs and got two made tonight. I also got the one end of the rod welded into the seat bracket. I really like how clean it turned out on the inside with running the rod through the holes and welding from the outside. It is starting to roll along again!

[Kronald_70GMC]

Last night I got the rods all welded into the brackets. I was going to tack the front tabs in when I had a sudden realization that saved me a lot of headache. Since I am unsure where my bucket seat is supposed to sit from side to side inside the cab, I had figured that I would center it between the console and the door. It's a good thing I didn't just go with that as I had not taken the thickness of my door panel into consideration and I think the way I had it would have been too tight to the door and the armrest would contact the seat. I will have to get a measurement off my dad's truck as he is running factory bucket brackets. That way I will know where it sits in relation to the console. Gonna have to make up the back tabs and get the rest of it welded up.

[Kronald_70GMC]

I've measured, measured and measured again and I've finally nailed down the location of my seat. I ended up moving the outer most tab in towards the center of the cab one hole and was able to have the front tabs symmetrical with eachother using all stock floor mounting locations. The passenger side will be a little more challenging in that aspect but that will be a problem for another day. I have also confirmed that there are a small few differences in these buckets from passenger to driver seat which I had already suspected. If you look at the bottom of the seat bracket I have built, you can see how the rods are skewed about 1/2" from side to side. This actually sits parrelel to the hump in the floor where the front of the seat sits which tells me that the seat mount holes are not all in a line.
The other thing that I've accomplished tonight is the rear mounting tabs are now complete. So now that I have quadruple checked measurements and everything is sitting very nice and exactly where I wanted it, the next step will be welding the tabs on and that will complete the driver's seat mock up!

[chewychevy67]

Those brackets look nice and snug but once you put carpet and insulation under it will the mounting holes still line up?

[Kronald_70GMC]

Originally Posted by chewychevy67

Those brackets look nice and snug but once you put carpet and insulation under it will the mounting holes still line up?

I am planning to move them back about an 1/8" before they are welded to the tabs. Then on final assembly, I plan to use bushings the same thickness as the carpet and insulation so that the brackets do not pinch the carpet at all. The only spot that I see a potential issue would be where the bracket kicks up in the front hence the moving the bracket back a touch to avoid any problems at that point.

[CG]

Good looking seat brackets. When deciding exactly where you seats should bolt in side to side have you sat on them with the steering wheel in? Its weird to drive a vehicle when the seat is off center from the steering wheel.

[Kronald_70GMC]

Originally Posted by CG

Good looking seat brackets. When deciding exactly where you seats should bolt in side to side have you sat on them with the steering wheel in? Its weird to drive a vehicle when the seat is off center from the steering wheel.

I have not because I'm missing some of my column pieces to mount it right now. But I have checked the center on that and it is right center of the seat. Must mean I'm doing something right

[Kronald_70GMC]

The seat bracket is now welded in place and the seat bolted into the truck. I just have a bit more metal finishing to do on the tabs to hide my welds and make it all neat and finished looking. I put some cushions on the seat and sat in there and pretended that I was driving for a bit.

I did a bit of testing with some washers and found that for every 4 washers the seat went up, I lost one washers width on the angled kickup at the front. So I figured based on the fact that 4 washers was 1/4", I needed to have 2 washers of space along that slope. Of course this is based on my hoping that carpet and insulation equate to about 1/2".

[Kronald_70GMC]

I almost finished up metal finishing around my tabs today. The more I looked at the back tabs, the more I didn't like the way they were hanging passed the rod so I cut them back so the look like the front ones. I'm very happy with how it's coming together. I know it seems crazy to get so finicky with details like this, especially under the seat but with the cutouts in the side of the brackets and the fact that I plan to have amplifiers under the seats, someone might look in there and I want it to look good.

[Kronald_70GMC]

So a week and a half ago I got my center console mounted for mockup purposes and forgot to post about it. and also today I managed to get the passenger seat inner bracket rough cut to size. The console was mounted using nutserts as I am not a big fan of self tapping screws. It also has such a cleaner look to it. Before I could cut the passenger seat bracket, I had to do some fine tweaking to the seat temporary height rods to ensure that the top of the backrests were at the same height.

[Kronald_70GMC]

Yesterday afternoon, I was able to rough cut the outer passenger bracket to size. I also got the inner one welded to the angle iron on the seat.

[Kronald_70GMC]

I feel like I've been here before. Today I got the outer seat bracket welded to the angle iron and started to make the "speed holes" in the inner bracket.

[Kronald_70GMC]

I just realised that I forgot to post my progress from the weekend. I got the first "speed hole" and cleaned up with a file and rounded out nicely.

[Chevys4life]

Originally Posted by Kronald_70GMC

I just realised that I forgot to post my progress from the weekend. I got the first "speed hole" and cleaned up with a file and rounded out nicely.

Nice job on those seat brackets!!!!

[Kronald_70GMC]

Originally Posted by Chevys4life

Nice job on those seat brackets!!!!

Hey thanks man!

[Kronald_70GMC]

Finally on the last bracket! Today I finished up the holes on the inner bracket and got the outer bracket laid out, drilled and filed on one half. It will be nice to have this completed. It is alot of filing by hand. I had a minor filing mishap and ripped my layout tape for the other half so I will have to re-tape and cutout the radius on that corner.

[Kronald_70GMC]

Been a while since I bought anything for project Splice so I figured it was time. I ordered up some Altman easy latches on black Friday and I'm super happy with them thus far. Though all I've done is unbox them Won't need them for a little while anyway but at least I have them when I do.

Today I managed to get the rest of the hole cut out on the last seat bracket. I also was able to get the holes drilled for the steel rods and 2 mounting tabs made. Getting so close to done on these seat brackets.

[Kronald_70GMC]

I had a chance to get out in the shop today and make the last two tabs for the seat bracket. I would have probably had enough time to get it all tack welded together had I not run into a stripped out nut in the floor. I decided the best remedy to this problem was to drill out the 4 mounting points and up the size of the bolt from 5/16 to 3/8. I will end up doing the same thing with the drivers side bracket so that the bolts will all be the same. I ended up being able to use one of the front mounting nuts already in the cross member on the passenger side so I will only have to weld in one nut. I would like it to resemble the factory as mush as possible from below so I will try to get a square nut in there.

[cornerstone]

Hey Kyle! Absolutely incredible attention to detail. I'm stunned by how much progress you've accomplished since I last checked in. Hats off for your persistence. You and a few other guys builds are setting a fire under my butt. No promises but I'm trying to form a plan on what to address next on my 72. I'm thinking it will serve me well to get the drop down battery mounting location resolved and installed. Great to see your work again. -Brian

[Kronald_70GMC]

Originally Posted by cornerstone

Hey Kyle! Absolutely incredible attention to detail. I'm stunned by how much progress you've accomplished since I last checked in. Hats off for your persistence. You and a few other guys builds are setting a fire under my butt. No promises but I'm trying to form a plan on what to address next on my 72. I'm thinking it will serve me well to get the drop down battery mounting location resolved and installed. Great to see your work again. -Brian

Brian, thank you so much for the kind words! It really help to keep me motivated when I hear compliments like that. It is good to see you back on the forums, I was starting to wonder what happened to you. I hope all is well and you can get a jump back on the truck again. I look forward to the updates.

[Kronald_70GMC]

I was able to find the time I needed to get the passenger bracket all tacked together. Now the fun of shaping the feet comes back again. I know this is not exactly accurate by any means but according to some shoty work with a torpedo level and a straight edge and due to the fact that no one will likely be able to see the bubble I assure you it's somewhere in the middle I'm pretty happy with that.

[Kronald_70GMC]

Well today was a successful day in the shop for sure. I had recently decided that I wanted to replace all of my seat springs. I figured I'd better do it while they are right out in the open. I'd hate to have the seats done down the road and then have a broken spring after the fact. They were looking pretty pitted and worse for wear where the seat cover had been ripped anyway. I picked up some new Zig zag springs in rolls from the local upholstery shop and watched a few videos and away I went. I'm very happy that I decided to do this. According to research the seat springs are supposed to be something like 9 gauge. Then the back rest springs are 11 gauge or something along those lines. The replacement back rest springs are nearly identical in every way, same gauge and they feel exactly the same for tension as the old ones. Where I really noticed a difference was in the seat springs. The new ones are considerably larger gauge which at first I thought they may be to big but after installing one seat worth and comparing to the old springs, it is a much more comfortable seat. I threw down some cushions on both and I couldn't believe how much nicer the seat felt even though the springs are so much stiffer.