If you're super tall, like me,
you may find yourself wishing you could get your
seat to go back a bit further to get yourself even
just a little bit more leg room. Well, guess
what? You can!! At least I could...
hopefully your seat tracks are like mine, and you
can have the same luck...
The photos below show a secondary project I took on while installing air conditioning in my Healey... moving the seats back as far as possible - farther than they can normally go. I'm very tall, so wanted to see if I could find some more leg room.
I apologize.... I really wish I would have taken more photos of this... but after studying the seat tracks a bit, I discovered that the notches on the track that the seat clicks into... well, there's actually one more notch on the track that is normally
inaccessible! It's inaccessible because the upper part of the track assembly stops against a coil spring pin prior to being able to reach it. Well, all I did was take out the spring pins and drill some new holes for them... as far back on the track as I could possibly go. Once done, the seat was able to slide further back on the track, clicking into that previously unreachable notch. The notches are 1 inch apart, so this moved the seats back 1 inch... which may not sound like much, but believe me, it makes a lot more than 1 inch difference at the knees!
While I was at it... when I mounted the seat frame back to the floor, I shimmed it as much as possible with some washer stacks, tilting it back slightly. It didn't make a huge difference, but gave me just a touch more room... about another 1/4" at the top of the seat back. This was literally all the room I could possibly obtain, because....
As you can probably already guess, if you look at your Healey, the seat back runs into the rear panel long before it could go back another inch. So, once I got the seats worked out, I had to modify the rear panels. This actually wasn't that difficult. It involved peeling the vinyl off a little along the back edges, and then trimming board material away from the back, then trimming and reattaching the vinyl.
Then, this was mated to bending the front metal portion of the panel, where it joins to the board, to change the angle at the front... sort of tilting the entire front edge of the panel back as far as possible. As it turns out... you can tilt the panel back... well, a little over an inch... before it hits the convertible top frame. So I went as far as possible, right up til it was touching the frame.
Worked out fantastic!! The seat now just touches the panel in its full back position... which is just the way it was before.... but now, that "full back position" is about 1.25" further back at the top of the seat back. That 1.25" translates to MUCH more comfortable driving position for a tall (6'4") guy like me.
Two things: One, keep in mind that there's no way your package tray will fully come down now (but it is still usable, angled a bit). And two, if you have a convertible top boot, the Tenax fastener that mounts to the stud on the rear panel will be out of position now... too loose. I had to reposition the fastener on the top boot in order to get it back to a snug fit... but fortunately it's not that obvious that there's now an open hole in that top boot flap.
If anyone has any questions about any of this, feel free to send me an email!
