The weather in my area isn't really cooperating with progressing on my Centerdoor body. It's either two hot or two wet. AND, I have determined that I will need to redo the body sills as I don't believe they were replicated correctly by a previous owner.
One item that didn't get a lot of attention here was the rear seat area. So, this post is in effect, an updated version of "Sometimes it's the big things" from November 2020. Below are two photos that reference the seat box.
I didn't photograph the disassembly of the seat box as the original rear piece was gone and had been replaced by a large block of wood.
How this works is thus: the seat spring rests upon this box (shown above) and the rear backrest spring attaches to a metal bracket on the rear belt rail. (shown below) The backrest spring frame will sit between a stringer that comes down from the belt rail, and two square blocks that sit on the rear of the seat spring box. (See above for the two blocks) The rear backrest spring frame has two finger holes to aid in lifting it out of the car if necessary. The stringer does not touch the back rest at all.
The stringer attaches behind this bracket.
The finger holes are visible in this photo.
The basic box itself was fairly straight forward. The heel board was easy to replicate from new wood. The actual pieces the spring sits on took some work. The mortise joints appear to be originally cut by a machine. A friend and I tried to duplicate that, but met with a little resistance. All in all, it was pretty easy to figure out. I originally cut two side pieces from new wood, but one split so I had to reuse the original. I am thinking that maybe the pieces were assembled square and later cut into the curved shapes. The way we went about cutting those mortises was probably harder than it should have been.
In these photos, you can see the rebuilt box with new and original wood pieces, including the metal flooring used underneath.
The bottom spring frame was also interesting as it showed how the various bits of upholstery were attached. You can tell that the wood was covered with painted cloth.
All of the upholstery was removed from the seat spring and the spring was reattached to it's wooden frame, using canvas webbing nailed in the original mounting locations. Unfortunately, I don't seem to have any photos of the restoration of the rear back rest spring frame yet.
Below is the completed rear seat box with spring. The metal tab protruding to the front is for the floorboards to attach to. You can also see there is just enough space for the back rest spring frame to rest in between the seat bottom and the little square blocks on the back of the seat box.
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