rear shocks removal- 62' S-33

[meteorwingnut]

Hey there,
getting my leaf springs done next week, thought i would save myself some money and do the rear shocks myself.

do i need to remove my back seat to get to the top bolts on shocks? i definatly could not find them in huge trunk!

also, if i do have to take it out...would love some leads on how to do that properly.
many thanks in advance,

[doberdawg]

I went out & looked at my parts cars (need parts?) You may be able to crawl into your trunk & with swivel sockets fight & get to the shock. But it takes 5 minutes to pull the back seat making the rear shocks very accessible. To remove the seat, the bottom half is not bolted in, you just lift & pull. If you actually want it out of the car you may need to pull a window crank from either side. The back of the rear seat has 2 bolts & is EZ to remove as well. I have 62 & 63 Meteor 4 doors & a 63 Fairlane 4 door I bought for parts for my pair of 63 S-33s. I have most any part except perfect bumpers, & I need an S33 horn ring, or horn ring center piece. I am in Central California [e-mail]

[w2zero]

Like d-dawg said, they are accessable from the trunk but it is very cramped. The bottom of the seat has to be jammed rearward before it will disengage from the hooks on the floorpan, then lifted an inch or so to slide it forward and out. The seat back has two bolts through the floor pan that will be exposed once the seat bottom is out. Then you can lift the seat back straight up to disengage the hooks at the front of the package shelf. That may or may not allow better access to the shocks depending on the window cranks and the arm rests. The arm rests are phillips head screws angled up into clips in the structure behind the side panels and the window cranks are most easily removed by buying the clip removal tool.

The shocks are in little wells with oval silver sheetmetal covers deep in the trunk just behind the rear seat back. It helps if you are a contortionist.

[doberdawg]

The only reason you would need to remove the arm rests or cranks is if you want to remove the seat from the car, if you just want access to the shocks you don't need to remove them, just slide the seat halves as far as possible toward front of car. The "catch" is if you try & lift & tilt them to remove them they catch on arm rests & cranks. You still would only need to remove from one side not both sides.

[meteorwingnut]

Thank guys! great detailed info and much appreciated....getting leafs done in 2 weeks, shocks after that. will keep you updated.