Re: Seat Track Disassembly

["twinenginedmc12 <twinenginedmc12@xxxx>" <twinenginedmc12@xxxx>]

Hi Dave.

The seat tracks on my car were rusted solid prior to rework. It was 
not necessary to dissassemble them before sandblasting. They came 
out great. I couldn't believe it. This was what I did:

Free the motion with a hammer (mine were REALLY rusty)

Sandblast, inside and out, fully assembled. 

Slide the sliding part back and forth until the tracks stopped 
sounding gritty. This, as a side effect, cleaned the rust off the 
balls and off the inside of the track, which were also rusty on my 
car's seat tracks.

Paint, making a halfhearted effort not to deliberately paint the 
inside of the track.

Lubricate the interior with synthetic grease.

That was that. They move like new, probably better. 

I suppose the residue of abrasive might shorten the life of the 
tracks by a few thousand cycles, but I don't intend to subject my 
seat tracks to the tens of thousands of cycles needed to find out.
One might try to clean out the last residues of abrasive, but I 
didn't bother. I don't feel it matters.

>From my experience, taking apart the seat tracks prior to 
sandblasting sounds like a good idea that sounds like a good idea.

Rick Gendreau 11472

--- In dmcnews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Dave Swingle <dswingle@xxxx>" 
<dswingle@xxxx> wrote:
> Has anyone taken the seat tracks completely apart? I want to take 
> them apart and clean/repaint. I have the tracks off the seat, but I 
> want to take the runners apart prior to sandblasting/painting. 
Since 
> there appear to be a couple of ball bearings inside the track, 
> sandblasting without disassembly would not seem to be a good thing. 
I 
> can see that I need to drill out a couple of stamped spots, but am 
> wondering what anyone may have done to put them back together.