Seat Bracket Welding

Well the velour seats in my mercedes have died, you know they are dead when the horsehair pad turns into horseE36 M3.

Well a fellow GRMer sold me a set of seats a few years ago and I've been slowly but surely gathering the required parts to get them installed. I've already found a set of seat bottoms from a mercedes to use as the donor bases for the new seats. Well I'm at the point now I want to get the seat brackets finished so I can figure out upholstery options for the seats.

My concern now is I need to weld in some flat stock and possibly gusset the flat stock to the donor seat bases. I'm no featherweight so I need the bracketing to be strong enough to support 200+lbs.

Here are a few pictures of what I'm tryng to accomplish, the piece of cardboard would be 2 1/2" of 1/8 flat stock.

Any help or suggestions are appreciated.

Looks pretty straight forward. Take it to your local welder/fabrication shop and they should be able to have you fixed up relatively cheap and quickly.

Make sure to take the plastic stuff off first, and protect what you can't remove...don't want it getting messed up during the welding process!

Bryce

I'm not sure I'm interpreting all the pictures correctly, but I think you might be on to something with the gusseting.

The simplest thing that occurs to me is to run angle iron (or square tube) between the flat stock extensions right next to the seat-bottom fasteners to keep them on the same plane.

My concern is that it looks like the extensions as they stand are only being held level by the desire of the preexisting flange to be horizontal, and as soon as you sit in them they're going to bend downward. That flange is clearly designed to accept the vertical load of a seat, but right on top of it, not 2" away toward the middle so that the vertical load creates a twisting force...

EDIT: When I say stuff like that ^^^, I feel it's important to point out that I'm not an expert fabricator, by any stretch of the imagination, and that I've never done specifically what you're looking to do. And yes, seats are muy importante from a safety standpoint.

is it possible to run square tube or angle iron across from rail to rail (and) under the flat stock?

Think I got it figured out, I can slip some T bar between the two rail and tack weld that in. The T bar won't flex. I'll then weld the flat stock on top of the T bar and side seat rail and drill a few holes and I'm done. Now I just need to get some metal and do a bit more welding practice before I attempt to weld this.

Thanks folks, I am creatively spent, I just always have a tough time visualizing projects and the fact I'm a bit of a novice make me a bit apprehensive to mess up. I'll try to post some pictures of my solution to this problem.

Thanks again and nice night!

thinking too hard, you are.. a lot of oem seat tracks are like 16 gauge stamped steel with slotted holes stamped in them where the bolt goes thru to hold them to the seat.. a couple of winters ago, i was forced to drive an 87 Celebrity as a temporary beater after the radiator in my Camaro froze up on a brisk -35 degree morning.. the stock seat sucked and made my back sore, but my Camaro seats rule for long distance comfort.. so i bolted the driver's side Camaro seat to the Celebrity track with a couple of tabs made out of some 1/8" steel- i only needed them on the outside, and they simply had a pair of 5/16" holes drilled in them about 1" apart to make up the difference in width. it was sturdy enough to not move around at all while holding all 245 pounds of me..

Ok got the first brace made up but not welded in, If I can get another brace up front then I can get the flat stock I need.

I'll take the frames apart so I don't melt any plastic. Thanks for the suggestions and I'll keep y'all posted.

That's the right idea.

For the flat parts, 1/8" thick is overkill. 16 or 14 gauge with a 3/8-1/2" lip on the edges would as stiff and easier to fabricate. Most sheet metal seat pans are 20 gauge w/ ribs for stiffening.

Ok got it welded up a bit, my welds aren't great but seem sturdy enough. Overkill might be what happened here but it seems sturdy. Just need to weld in the seat mount and I'm done hopefully it fits.

One seat is in and ready to go, need to finish the other seat bracket after the weather gets a bit better.

Thanks for the help folks.