I just acquired a couple power seat bases and I'm curious as to whether they'll work and what's involved. My car is a '70 Cutlass setup for bucket seats. The two bases I have are not the same - one appears to belong in a 71ish Cutlass while the other is marked as being from a '71 Toronado.

First question is whether the Toro base can even be made to fit/work in the Cutass?
Second question is whether the mounting points need to be changed for power seats or do they use the same mounting stud?

 

The Toro chassis will not mount without heavy modifications. The A body chassis will work, but you’ll need to install power seat brackets.

 

Thanks, that was kind of what I figured. Not worth the hassle at this point.

 

The cutlass seat track is actually 72 one-year only 3-cable unit. Someone cut the rear extenders off to make it fit on 66-68 seat bottoms, but it will bolt up to the 69-72 seat frame. It will just sit about an inch and a half closer to the steering wheel. It will fit your cutlass, but you will need an outer power seat floor bracket. The front seat mount studs in your car will work as is. The rear inner stud needs moved to the front hole already there. You will need to cut the factory rear inner stud off and weld a new one in the forward hole. You could also simply drill a hole in that location and put a bolt through the bottom of the floor. The rear outer mount needs welded in. You can buy a set of new power seat mounts and cut off the back half of the outer to weld in.
https://eastcoastrestorations.com/sh...-seat-bracket/

 

Thanks for the details! I'm done with welding and drilling on the floor so will be sticking with the manual sliders and will try to sell the power tracks.

 

Just in case you want to give it a second thought, here's my thread from a few years ago when I changed from manual to power bucket in my Rallye. I learned that having the factory brackets would have been an easier install than the aftermarket ones, amongst other things.

https://classicoldsmobile.com/forums...needed-141221/

 

GM over the years from maybe 1960 to 2000 or so had many variations on the 4 and 6 way seats to fit different floor pans/ floor plans and seat bottoms. There’s a pretty big variety. Many of the ones I found over the years were too tall to adapt to my ‘66 Stafire. I wound up with 6 power seat mechanisms from an 80’s Camaro/Firebird. These are relatively “short” meaning the seat bottoms sit low.

Here’s my big car experience in case you want to get way deep into Frankensteining your seats:

https://classicoldsmobile.com/forums...-seats-148572/

I did get way in deep. I like the result a few years later, but angle grinders still scare the sh*t out of me.

Chris