bolting seats through the carpet or not

[Peter Truman]

should the Spitfire seats be bolted direct to the steel floor or can they be fitted on top of the carpet and bolted through it to the floor.

Daughters Spit is bolted through the carpet and does creak a little (I'm no light weight, she is) also when removing the seats I found one mounting bolt siezed and thread bound with carpet so bad it stripped the thread, easily fixed! 

The car floors are in excellent condition no rust or signs of any cracking esp around the captive seat bolts which have an original small reinforcing plate that the captive nuts are welded to.

[Pete Lewis]

have always used a spacer /penny washer  to keep the slides off the carpet or they can bend 

but that was vitesse      sorry 

Pete

[Graham C]

Agree with Pete, should be spacers/washers between rails and carpet.

Graham

[Josef]

Using a soldering iron to melt holes through the carpet makes the seats much easier to fit, and avoids bits of carpet getting in to the nuts/bolts!

[Peter Truman]

Thanks gents, PeteL the Vitesse comes with thick big dia washers, but I'm not entering the argument whether 3 or 4, when I rebuilt my Mk2 I only had 6 ie 3 each side & I hunted all over for the missing 2 wondering why I only had 3 each side?

[Colin Lindsay]

Better than what I found under the carpet on my 13/60....

[Pete Lewis]

dont think there was any conclusion answer to why some parts list show only 3  

Pete

[dougbgt6]

Mine are bolted to the floor crushing the carpet. I can't see the frame bending, but compensating washers are a good idea. A job in the last brief summer was to replace a stripped thread seat bolt. The bolt disappeared up the frame and won't come out. A job next summer is to take the seat out and wave it about to recover the bolt. Or forget about the bolt and put another one in, but, the loose bolt is bound to rattle.  Or leave it, It's the passenger seat, I don't have passengers so I'm not bovvered, until the MOT. 

Doug

Edited October 28, 2023 by dougbgt6

[Colin Lindsay]

The rails are only raised up to make adjustment easier against the carpet, so doing without won't affect anything bar the slide. I think it's to do with the profile of the metal floor, that three spacers were needed and not four.

[Morgana]

MGBs have a wooden slat under the seat base with holes at each end for thick washers so the base is screwed down against the spacer and the slat ensures the middle doesn't sag. Triumph seem to have gone with the spacer washers only, at least for the Herald. I've just had the seats in and out to fix a PO's metric bodge and there was an uneven variety of washers. Returning to the original captive UNF nuts and some new spacer washers (between carpet and seat base) from Mick Dolphin mean the seats slide far better now and can be installed and removed in a trice from inside the car, without having to have a Mr Tickle hand underneat to hold a nut...