My 70 Duster is my first Duster project. I pulled the interior (bench seat), and it appears this car may have been drilled for bench and buckets. Did they all come that way? Makes sense I guess. The hole layout and drilling seems too good to have been done after the fact. There were no plugs in the unused holes though. According to the previous owner it was always a bench seat car.
70 Duster- Bench and bucket seat holes?
- Thread starter cooke
- Start date
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Alaskan_TA
Well-Known Member
Any photos, top side & underneath?
Does it have the reinforcing plates?
Here's a picture of a factory bucket seat car, showing the factory reinforcing plates on the inner holes.
Now, I know that the bucket seat cars came with the bench seat holes, which were then filled with rubber plugs.
***edit***
I went back and reviewed the pictures of my '74 Duster. While I definitely had to add the reinforcing plates, I can't remember if I added the holes or not. They show up as being there in my tear down pictures and I don't imagine I would have added them that early.
Here's a picture of a factory bucket seat car, showing the factory reinforcing plates on the inner holes.
Now, I know that the bucket seat cars came with the bench seat holes, which were then filled with rubber plugs.
***edit***
I went back and reviewed the pictures of my '74 Duster. While I definitely had to add the reinforcing plates, I can't remember if I added the holes or not. They show up as being there in my tear down pictures and I don't imagine I would have added them that early.
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The holes are in the same location as yours. The metal has a ridge, for the reinforcing plates, but no plates. Think they drilled all floors for both configurations and welded the plates on in the assembly line?
doug 371
Well-Known Member
the bucket seat holes are not drilled on bench seat cars
Alaskan_TA
Well-Known Member
Another thing to check - what is the interior code on your fender tag?
Yeah the floor has a stamped recess to locate the reinforcing plates. I honestly thought I drilled the holes for the buckets on my Duster, I think the floor was dimpled where the holes were supposed to be and I drilled them out. But I can't remember clearly enough to say for sure that's what I did, and I didn't take any pictures showing the floor with the dimples and not the holes.
But that doesn't necessarily mean your car wasn't drilled for buckets at the factory. Could have been the order/options for the car was changed on the line, or that the worker tasked with adding the holes did an extra car that day by accident. Not unheard of at all, there are factory automatic transmission cars that left the factory with a z-bar reinforcing bracket welded in place on the frame rail for a 4-speed instead of just getting a rubber plug in the hole and no bracket. Like Alaskan_TA said, if you can look at the fender tag or build sheet it would tell you if the car came with buckets or a bench.
Yeah I think that's right, I think the floors were dimpled at the locations the holes were supposed to be for the bucket mounts but not drilled. There are a bunch of places where that was done, the parts were stamped with dimples for the locations of optional holes and the holes were drilled later if that option was going to be on that car.
For example, you can see the dimples in the floor where the auto floor shifter would have been located in this picture. My car was a column shift so the floor shifter wasn't added. (I was adding a 4-speed hump).
doug 371
Well-Known Member
yes, I should have mentioned the dimples are there...and the outers are not plated because they have structure underneath
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