Removing front seats

My GTA is off the road at the moment - I'm restoring the interior and prepping the front half of the car for a respray. The front seat are proving to be a nightmare to remove. Are the studs that poke through the floor replaceable? The nuts are rusty and the thread that I can see is also rusty. I was going to grind them off......... wise move?

The main problem is that the head of the bolts with elongated washer arrangements rely on the physical strength of the pressed steel runners to hold them still. This is fine whilst the bolts are not rusty, buts since the bolts protrude underneath the car they are not likely to stay new for any length of time. The heads just end up springing the runner apart and spinning round as you have probably already found out.

Your better off if the old bolts snap off to be honest, as winding the nut down over the length of the bolt is not fun and usually takes two people one to hold the head with some grips and one of you underneath doing the spannering. Then change the bolts for stainless allen key type bolts.

It is not possible to get to the nuts to grind them with a normal angle grinder as they are recessed back into pockets in the floorpan, not unless a small Dremmel is capable of doing the job. On some bolts I managed to get the nut undone a little and using a hacksaw blade alone with a handle I used the flexible blade with very short strokes to cut through the bolts above the nut, again not fun.

All in all it took two of us about 5 hours to get one seat out

I am yet to attempt the other seat

Si21

[BIG_MVS]

I have taken my fair share of seats out and as Si has said they can be a right sod to remove. Through experience though I have found the best method to be a flat head screwdriver wedged between the runner and the head of the bolt whilst un-doing with a socket set the nut underneath the car.

Failing that the angle grinder comes out, but take extreme care with the plastic underside as it's quite literally like a knife through butter with the grinderwith one false move...... .