1960 Power Seat problem, insufficient rearward travel

Greetings all,

When I bought my '60 DeSoto a few months back the power seat didn't work in all the ways it should. Since then I disassembled and cleaned, then relubed each part. When apart the seat track would move freely back and forth for the full length of travel. There are vee-shaped divots on both the top and bottom halves of the track that limit the seats forward travel when they meet. For a rear travel limit there is a bracket that bolts to the top half that would meet the stanchion on the lower track that also holds the toothed rack for horizontal travel. I have roughly 4 inches left of travel before reaching this limit but it will travel no further.

This system has one motor that selectively drives three speedometer-like cables for vertical, horizontal or tilt functions. On each side there is a gear box with three cable-driven worm gears that turn bigger gears which have smaller pinion gears attached to them. Each pinion drives a toothed rack creating the motion requested. Each piece is undamaged, no missing teeth or binding in travel.

Before I start experimenting, does anyone out there understand what would cause this premature limit of travel. Could the solenoid gears have a limit built into them? Could I simply re-position the rack on the gear set in the more rearward position and acquire full travel. I was very careful to keep the gears and racks in the same position as they were in before dissembly, but then this was a problem then too.

Thank you for any and all ideas,

Justin

Big never mind, seat is working as it should.

I got to thinking that if this problem was there both before and after I did my tuning than maybe I had a problem left over from the last bozo who was fiddling around here. On each side some of the bolts had been replaced. I also replaced all the mounting hardware using square-keyed stove bolts as close as I could come to the originals. While the heads were shallower than what I replaced, they were not quite shallow enough. Once I removed the rear bolts all was fine. I will now trim some elevator bolts to fit and look forward to many miles of stretch-out driving to come.

Thanks to anyone who gave this any thought,

Justin