86 Firebird Seat Latch Replacement
 

My 86 Firebird driver seat back is angled back too much due to a worn out seat latch. I have been able to identify two latches for 82 to 92 seats and I believe 85 and up has a different latch than earlier models.
I am not finding any availability of replacement parts so I seems I will have to replace both front seats with some Procar black vinyl seats to fix the problem.
If anyone knows where I can get a latch please let me know. My seats are in good condition and I hate the idea of tossing them over this latch.
Thanks

Re: 86 Firebird Seat Latch Replacement
 

try www.thirdgenranch.org

Re: 86 Firebird Seat Latch Replacement
 

I've got a few seat hinges. Can you post a picture of your seats hinge lever ?? ( the lever on the back of the seat ) There were a couple different types of levers IIRC.


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Re: 86 Firebird Seat Latch Replacement
 

Re: 86 Firebird Seat Latch Replacement
 

Those picture got really big when I uploaded them. Fortunately they are clear. Let me know if you need anything else. Thanks for your help.

Re: 86 Firebird Seat Latch Replacement
 

Yup,... I've got a couple like that. I seem to remember that these were taken from Firebird seats. (You can see one laying in the background that came off an 84 Camaro and it's got a little metal "lever". ) Both of the 2 hinges that are the same as your style tilt back equally,... $15 + shipping if you still need one. If your interested just send me a PM.

P.S. When dealing with a seat backrest that seems to sit back too far,....... More than once I found the seat backrest frame was bent causing the impression that the hinge was at fault. In both cases the driver was a large dude ( +6' and 250+ pounds ) and the way he was getting IN and OUT of the car is what bent the seat backrest.

https://berlinetta.info/temp/hinges.JPG

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Re: 86 Firebird Seat Latch Replacement
 

I had a chance to look at the seat again yesterday. I can't tell if the seat back is bent or not. I am trying to figure that out. I take it one hinge would not cause what I am seeing so I will have to tear it down to see if I can spot the problem. Do you know if the seat backrest frame can be straightened?

Re: 86 Firebird Seat Latch Replacement
 

The last seat I messed with that had the problem was about 3 weeks ago in my step-dads car. He thought his hinge was bad but once I stripped the seat to replace the hinge I confirmed that the backrest was NG. His seat was a Firebird seat and on those seats the top 1/2 of the hinge is under the seat fabric so I had to just about remove the seat fabric to get the hinge off..... so I just pulled the fabric all the way off and took a good look at the backrest. The twisted frame was easy to see when the frame was exposed. ( I could pretty much tell that the backrest was bent just by looking at the seat when it was removed from the car - when standing behind the seat and looking down you could kinda' see that the backrest side bolsters didn't 'line-up' with the seats bottom bolsters. )

I'm fairly sure that I wouldn't want to try and straighten the seat backrests' frame. While it might be possible; a metal frame that got bent and then re-bent back into shape will almost certainly re-bend the same way again in the future if some type of 'extra steps' were taken to ensure that it wouldn't happen again. In both cases where I found a bent seat back-rest,... I replaced the frame rather than trying to re-bend it.

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