I had to remove the driver's seat to dry out my carpet (another story for another time), and when I went to install the seat, the front two bolts were very hard to install. The manual says a torque of 35 ft-lbs. Both took way much more than that; I got one bolt tight but not the other. I finally decided to remove the one bolt and found it was buggered up. When trying the various fastener stores around in the area, it was explained to me that these were thread-cutting bolts, due to small grooves across the threads. Aha! That's why the torque needed was so high: it was recutting threads in the base. Further, I found the bolt was being bound up by the frame of the seat, so I had to prop the seat up to allow proper clearance. Presumably, Ford designed the frame to just have a unthreaded hole, and the installer then installed the bolt, cutting the threads. The proper way to proceed for re-installation would be to find the correct pitch metric bolt (10mm) and use the existing threads. For me, I had to find the proper tap, re-tap the hole, and insert a standard bolt and washer. It went in with fingers until the last torquing. Voila!
The bottom line is: don't re-use these bolts after removal of your seat, but change to a standard metric bolt.
The bottom line is: don't re-use these bolts after removal of your seat, but change to a standard metric bolt.
