I bought a 68 firebird not too long ago and so far have done nothing to it. Don't plan to get any restoration done at this time but want to make a few repairs. I need to add a seatbelt to the rear seat so all of my kids fit in this car. It sounds simple enough, but can anyone tell me anything I may need to know about this task? On my mustang that I sold, it was real easy to flip the rear bench up - is it similar on this car?
I apologize for my lack of knowledge on how to work on cars and my husband says it's my car and he mostly only works on tractors, so I'm kind of on my own here.
Thanks.

You push in on the back rest at bottom as you pull up on the seat from the crevice , pulling it as it would pivot at front edge...IIRC...you may HAVE seat belts under there, lots of times they get covered up by the seat when people put it back...

Seeing as I have no idea what this means, I'll describe it in my feeble mind terms...

You need to push your knee into the front vertical face of the seat bottom. (at aproximately the quarter points, maybe a foot from the doors each side) This will 'unhook' the bottom front of the the seat bottom. Then the front of the bottom seat will pivot upward and you can lift it out. Like Bjorn said, the seatbelts may have just fallen down under the seat. There should be three sets of seatbelts for a '68 rear seat, unless a prevoius Owner removed them. If the seat hasn't been out for quite a while, you really have to press hard. I am always afraid I will tear the fabric because of how hard you need to press and lift.

Thanks for the info, this should help a lot. I always thought there were only 2 sets of belts in the rear seat, because that's all that is currently exposed. I don't believe that this seat has been opened up in the last 35 years, because if so, the previous owner, my father, would have uncovered the additional set of seatbelts. I guess I'll find out.

I just removed my rear seat bottom last week. Was a bit of a pain but came out ok. I removed mine in order to get the seatbelts out to clean them. Also found that my upper seat back wasn't even bolted in!! Got that fixed too.

'67 firebirds came with two sets of belts. '68's came with three.

Had to add the third set to my '67 for a family of 5...

IIRC the third set of belts is added to the bolts already there for the two outer sets....no other bolts needed , just bolt in the belts....

That's what I was planning to do if I needed to add a set.

Not having any luck getting the rear seat bottom to move.
Can this latch on the front vertical wall of the seat bottom be felt thru the seat vinyl? Was trying to feel around for some sort of latch to know exactly where to push. Didn't find anything, so just tried pushing in the location described, but we didn't have any luck.

Here's what it looks like and the location:


And a previous discussion:

https://firstgenfirebird.org/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=85230&page=1

You do have to push really hard on it.

Are you putting enough weight on it? it needs to go down , rearward before it releases

or if you can put your knees on it then stick your hands in the crevice between seat and back rest , pull the seat up,,,

Look at Jims pic. It has the right side of the pic facing forward. Then look at this pic. this is the wire / rod on the bottom of the seat you are trying to dislodge from the bracket in Jims pic.

It takes a LOT of pushing from the front of the seat to slide it back in the bracket. Then it lifts up and toward the front to get out. If it hasn't been removed in a while it will take a lot of force. If you can move the front seats all the way ahead, then jump into the back and straddle the hump (get your mind out of the gutter LOL !!), facing the trunk, wedge your knees against the bottom of the back seat and your feet against the back of the front seats and push and wiggle up and down against the back seat, it should move. Thats how I finally got mine. It was really stuck.

We finally got it. Thanks for all the help. The descriptions and especially the pictures were very helpful.

Even found a baseball card and a few other mementos from my childhood under there. Not as many as I would have guessed though.

So did you find three sets of seatbelts? The suspense is killing us!

Don't they all have three sets?

They came with 3, but that doesn't mean they still have 3. I think that question is what started the entire thread.

Looks like I missed that detail when catching up after being away.

Oh yeah, I guess I should answer that. I was psyched when I pulled out the 3rd set of belts, but unfortunately, for some odd reason, the female portion, the latch mechanism was missing. But it hopefully it shouldn't be too tough to slide a new one on there. I think I read in a different thread where someone was taking theirs off to clean them and another poster said it takes some work but you can remove and replace it by just feeding the belt through. I think that should be easier than putting a different set of belts in that is intact but I don't know for sure.

Another positive thing I noticed was the lack of rust under there. I was worried about the condition of the bolts if I needed to remove them to add the third set of belts but all the hardware under there looked quite clean. Besides for adding and removing belts, it's just nice to see that the condition of the car is good there.

Thanks again for all the help. I'm a new member on here and really appreciate how many people on here are willing to help. I'm looking forward to learning a lot on here.
Have a good one.