9/3/09
GTE 2953, Seat Rollers

I’ve been working on putting Scott Garvey’s GTE back together, and I was sorting out the parts to the seat tracks. Gary Hiniker’s GTE had a problem with his GTE seats where they rocked in their mounts, and I wanted to take a closer look at these seats to see if I can find a solution. I’ve found two types of seats in GTEs, one with a fiberglass bucket and another with rubber straps to suspend the foam of the seat. The earlier cars have the fiberglass bucket like these cars. (sorry about the fuzzy photo)

Looking at 2953, I found rollers that allow the seat tracks to slide and adjusts the seat front to back. They resemble a steel sewing machine bobbin, but with a rubber insert. I think these are original to these seats, but of the four rollers found in one pair of seat tracks, two were missing.

The rubber inserts were probably used to cushion the steel roller in the seat track from vibration, but much of the rubber was past its prime. I carefully measured the diameter of the roller along with the rubber, and tried machining a new roller.

I made a new one out of a hard polyurethane, slightly oversized to see if the larger roller would take out some of the slop in the seat track. Too large of a roller, and the seat would be too hard to adjust, but too small of a roller and the seat would have a lot of rocking. I made the best compromise, even though there was still some rocking in the seat when I was done. The play may have also been from the worn rubber bushings in the original rollers. I think the later seats have solid steel or aluminum rollers with a seat track with a different design.

Another car we’re working on at François’ shop is a California Spyder. We’re getting closer to completion every day, but there always seems to be a few more details to cover. I put the little diamond shaped bends in the choke cable today, just to help with those little details that will really make a big difference.

Just a reminder, I’m looking for a new Vintage Ferrari Project. If you have, or know of a restoration project, please let me know. It would be great to restore another car on this website! My E-mail.

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