We have a large scrap yard in town that shreds cars and takes in industrial scrap. They ship out semi loads and rail cars loads of metal. We also have a u pull it style junk yard that is associated with the scrap yard. Cars come in, get the date written on the windshield and lined up, row upon row. I’m guessing that very few are running when they come in. Most look like what’s left after an accident. These are the cars that no one wants. They are not worth rebuilding not only because of heavy damage but they are mainly minivans, little pickups and cheap economy cars. No Hondas. No Miatas. No sports cars. No muscle cars. After some length of time they get loaded on a truck and sent to be shredded. The end.
For one dollar you get to sign a waiver that says if you end up crushed under a car, too bad. You also get to wander around acres of wrecks looking for Good Stuff. It took a few trips to find my seats. I was looking for fabric seats so that I could take them apart, open the seams and resew them smaller. It didn’t take long to figure out that I was looking for a car that had all of the glass intact. Cars with broken windows or doors left open had ruined interiors from being out in the weather. Cars with all of the bells and whistles had seats that were too big and the seats were too hard to get out. Little economy cars were the ones to look for.
The Hyundai I found had already lost its back seat and some of the inside trim but the front seats were in very good condition. I had to go out to the parking lot to retrieve my tools and round up one of the wheelbarrows that they keep for the customers. Only about half of the wheelbarrows are in service at any time because of battle damage. I had the seats out in no time as they were manual with only the seat buzzer to disconnect. I paid my $20 for the pair and went home happy.
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The seats were a bit dirty but since they would be disassembled anyway, I took off the covers soaked the them in a bucket with laundry detergent.
Now the seats were about 20” wide while the driver’s side space was 17” wide. The passenger side was worse as it was only 13 1/2” wide. Why is the passenger side so narrow? I used a complete Miata drive train which includes the shortened Power Plant Frame. No need to design a special mount for the nose of the diff.
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First order of business was to disassemble one seat. Here is the seat bottom, I can’t find a picture of the seat top.
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