How to increase head and/or leg room in your car

[Fab64]

Greetings fellow slanters,

Since I'm 6'7" tall, there aren't many cars I can easily fit into, and my A-body is no exception. When I originally bought my '67 Barracuda with bucket seats, the seat foam was old and broken down, and allowed me to sit much lower. After I had new foam installed, I couldn't even sit upright in the car. This post shows how I increased both head and leg room. This simple modification has allowed me to drive my car in comfort.

Note - this mod consists of two parts. If you only need to increase leg room, there's no need to replace your seat tracks. It can be done using a few pieces of flat stock . However, if you want to lower your bucket seats to increase head room, you'll also need to obtain a pair of bench seat tracks. I don't know of a way to increase head room if you have a bench seat, but I believe the leg room mod should also work for bench seats.

First, the leg room mod:

Note - measurements are very important! Don't assume my measurements will fit your car. Make sure you double-check the measurements in your own car, and build your brackets to fit.

For my brackets, I used 3/16" thick by 2" wide flat stock. This is probably heavier than necessary, but I tend to err on the side of caution. Actually, instead of using brackets, you could increase leg room by simply drilling new holes in your floorpan. I used brackets because I don't like putting new holes anywhere in my car.

This mod requires you to fabricate two longitudinal (fore-and-aft) brackets. With the stock seat location, there was about 5-1/2" rear leg room (between the bucket seat back and the rear bench seat) in my car. The longitudinal distance between the floorboard holes on my car is about 12-3/16". For max front leg room, I want to move my seat brackets back 5-1/2". I will drill two sets of mounting holes in my longitudinal bracket:



Note the front set of holes, which will attach the brackets to the floor, are square. You will want to use carriage bolts here (3/16" I think). Drill the holes a little smaller than necessary, then use a small square or triangular-shaped file to file them into the same shape and size as the square shoulder on the carriage bolts:



The second set of holes is drilled 5-1/2" back from the first set. These are round, and will be used to mount the bench seat tracks:



The outside bracket is shown here with a bench seat track sitting on it. If you don't need to lower your seat, you can simply attach your bucket seat track to the rear pair of holes in this bracket and you're done. Note - if you're not using bench seat tracks, you probably want to make all four holes square. That way, you can insert carriage bolts from the bottom, to attach your bucket seat track to the bracket.


Next, the head room mod:

Note if your leg room is adequate, and you just need more head room, you can do the head room mod without adding longitudinal brackets. Simply bolt the bench seat tracks to your floor, and fabricate cross brackets to adapt your bucket seats to them.

The seat brackets/tracks on my buckets are 3-1/2" tall:



Bench seat tracks are only about 1-1/2" high. By using the bench tracks, you can gain 2" of head room. I found a usable pair of 70-76 A-body bench seat tracks on eBay for only $30, plus $10 shipping:



The problem is the mounting holes for bench seat tracks are right over each other (straight up and down), while the bucket seat upper mounting points are offset about 1-5/8" to each side of the floorboard holes:



The side-to-side width of the mounting holes in the floor is about 12-1/2". The width of the mounting holes in the seat is about 15-3/4". This will require you to fabricate cross brackets to make up for the 3-1/4" difference in width:





For the cross brackets, cut two pieces to a length of 17-3/4":



These will mount sideways across the bottom of the seat:



Next, drill the two inside holes in each bracket, which will attach to the seat tracks. I split the difference and drilled the holes exactly in the middle (1-5/8" in from the outside holes). Note I had to notch out a few places on the front bracket, to clear parts of the seat frame:



Before re-assembly, a few modifications are needed to the seat tracks. On the bottom of the outside track, I cut off a tab (circled) that was sticking down and didn't seem to be used for anything.



I also cut the adjuster handle, which will not clear the seat if left in its original position. You may be able to bend this out of the way instead of cutting. Now I have to figure out a way to re-attach it when I get time.





Ordinarily, a wire runs from the driver's side adjuster to an arm on the passenger-side locking tab (see below). The locking tab on my inboard track was not engaging, so I left this wire off (only my outboard track locks). If both of your locks are working, you will need to shorten and connect the wire, or disable the inboard lock.



Now it's time to start assembling everything. This must be done before attaching to the seat because the nuts which attach the top of the seat tracks to the cross brackets are inaccessible once the cross brackets are on the seat. Starting with your longitudinal brackets, insert carriage bolts in the square holes, put the seat track studs through the bracket and attach the nuts. Cut off the excess length on each seat track stud, and file smooth.





Use short carriage bolts to attach the top of the seat tracks to the cross brackets.



The seat track holes are square, and the low height of the bolt heads will avoid interference with the track mechanism:



You'll have to slightly bend the spring brackets on each seat track, to avoid interference with the cross bracket. You can even cut these off if you're not using the large spring, whose only function seems to be pulling the seat forward when you release the mechanism. The only spring I'm using is the one that holds the locking mechanism in place.



As you can see, overall height of this assembly is only 1-1/2":



A couple views of the completed assembly:





After the seat tracks and four brackets are assembled, bolt the entire assembly to the bottom of the seat. You may have to go back and slightly tweak some holes, enlarging them with a file to get everything to bolt together:



Ready to be installed in the car:



The seat is now so low, there is no longer enough clearance for the seat trim pieces, so I had to leave them off.



"I pity the fool" who has to sit behind me!!



Ready to cruise in comfort:



That's it. I hope this helps someone else. If you have any questions on anything, feel free to PM me.

Roger

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[wvenable]

Wow 6' 7"! Wouldn't be easier if you just sat in the back seat?

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66 Lil' Red Piggie Valiant (Mater Crusher) - Thanks Zilla!!!!! 72 Demon (Number 1 Son's)

[DusterIdiot]

Your mod was used by one of my uncle's friends. He was a big guy and had some leg room problems in his 70 duster...After some experimenting he found out that if he moved the seat all the way back he could pick up a tenth on his ET since his 300 lb frame put a bit more weight on the rear axle...

-D.Idiot

[sandy in BC]

Nice writeup!

I did something along those lines to intall Toyo seats in my early A.....and Bonneville 12 way seats in my Old Suburban.

Really nice writeup!

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Yeah....Im the one who destroyed this rare, vintage automobile.....


http://www.arrowtipi.com/My%20Webs/index%20Valiant.htm

[Reed]

Very nice, and THANK YOU for posting this! This might be enough to get me looking into getting another A body instead having a van for a daily driver. Being 6'4" and 300 pounds makes it a bit difficult to get comfy in a stock passenger car.

Since you are a tall guy, a product you might be interested in, and one that I use in my vans since I am tall and sit far back from the front window, is this the LightinSight windshield traffic light lens. Since installing this, I don't have to bend down to see the traffic light anymore.

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Buy local! http://www.stillmadeinusa.com/ http://www.americansworking.com/tools.html

[Fab64]

Thanks for the compliments, guys. I've gotten an awful lot of good information from the people on this forum, so it's nice to be able to give something back for a change.

[SixtySix_Fury]

My dad had a buddy that drove a 2dr chevette and he sat in the back sit.

Nice mod work

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66_Fury

A wolf that lies in his lair never gets meat, or
A sleeping man victory.

[65Dodge100]

That is a very nice seat modification. I’m always looking for something.


I’m only 6’ and have trouble with leg room even in full size cars. Most seats are made flat. My knees are 2-3” off the seat putting all of my weight on my tailbone. Very uncomfortable on long trips
.

A very simple modification that I figured out long ago was to put a 3/4”-1” spacer under the seat at the front. It pulls your feet away from the pedals, lifts the front of the seat so your legs rest on it and the back of the seat goes back giving you and inch or two of head room. The farther you slide the seat forward the higher you get so you get even more leg room. It’s very easy to try - you can just stack washers under the front seat bolts. You are only limited by the length of the bolt.


This especially works good in trucks where moving the seat back 5” is out of the question and head room usually isn’t a problem.


A little off the subject but I used to work for a guy that restored cars and built kit-cars. He was about 6’-7”. He built a replica of a Ford GT40 and had to cut a hole in the roof and put a fiberlass bubble in for head room. I wish I’d had the sense to take a picture of it. It was really goofy looking and I’d bet it’s one of a kind.


Danny

[mackie]

indeed quite a good mod. im 6'7" so suffice to say this increased my driving comfortability quite significantly