I have a long back which is very stiff through injury and even with the power seat at it’s lowest position, I have some trouble sqeezing into the vette. Once in the seat, my head is very close to the roof and I have to hunch down a bit, so a few years ago I added some wire to lengthen the two inner seat springs on the drivers side seat and also removed some foam from the seat.

This was a big improvement, but I soon noticed the reclining mechanism sticking into my side. i replaced the power reclining system with a shorter manual one and that fixed that problem. I also began to notice a hard ledge towards the front of the seat. This wasn’t too uncomfortable at first but I realised it was preventing me from sitting a little bit lower.

The hard ledge was the raised part of the seat that holds the front retainer to the seat springs.

So I cut it out !

The seat is made of plastic with some metal embedded at key areas around the edge. the part I cut out was all plastic, and I used the cutting wheel on a dremel

The part I cut out looks like it was contributing to the rigidity of the seat base, so I fabricated some 6mm aluminium flat bar to replace it, but mounted further forward.

One end bolts through into the seat track, the other bolts through a spare hole. looks like the seats have two sets of holes so they can be mounted as left or right seats.

I used some fencing wire temporarily to hold the front of the seat wires in place. The seat feels more comfortable and I have possibly gained another 10 mm headroom. Now my head only justs hits the roof as I squeeze into the car.

When I have used the seat for a while I’ll replace the fencing wire with some stainless steel wire.

Seats –

The existing leather seats were the most comfortable car seats I have ever sat in but leather is just too hot for my part of the world.

To stop from sweating I had to sit on a towel even in winter, so I recovered the seats with black leather side bolsters and thick sheepskin centres, which are coloured a deep Burgundy.

I’m so comfortable sitting ‘in’ the sheepskin seats and they’ve added to the appearance of the interior, which looks great. I’ve covered the armrest with matching sheepskin.