First, CLEAN IT UP! Even if you're a neat freak the area around and under a 30 year old set of front seats has gotta be nasty. Get the shop vac in there and suck up anything that's not attached. Go ahead and vaccuum under the seats, behind the seats, and in the wheel-well holes beside/under the seats. Use a wire brush to knock more stuff loose and vaccuum again. Get it clean because the next steps will attract every loose particle within a 5 mile radiuis. Now, head to Wal-Mart or your favorite FLAPS and get a can of PB!Blaster. Liberally spray the lever mechanism, spring, rails, and catch teeth. Go have lunch. Respray everything you sprayed before and start working the lever up and down until you can SEE the catch teeth release smoothly from the rails every time. Get a piece if string/wire for each seat and tie the release lever in the up position -- hook the string to the steering wheel on that side and find something on the dash on the right. Re-spray the parts of the rail that the catch-teeth were covering. Grab the back of each seat and shake violently side to side. Get a 2lb hammer and start tapping the seat rails (not the tracks on the bus, the tubing on the seat) from the back, shifting from one rail to the other. At some point after the "go have lunch" part they will break loose and just slide right out. When they are out clean the snot out of the tracks and just before you put them back in grease them up with axle greas or something else that won't lose it's lubricating properties easily in the presence of significant amounts of dust and dirt. Something THICK and GOOEY. Thin lithium based greases seem to fail quickly and turn to glue. What year is your bus? You say "They slide" and I wrote the above as if bothe sides have sliders. In my '73 and '74 Buses the passenger seat comes out by LIFTING the front of the seat and disengaging the rear lower bar from a set of "hooks". G2 On Fri, 02 Dec 2005 13:33:54 -0600 Brian Denning <i_am_cool_fred@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > ok what am i doing wrong here. i am trying to get the front buckets out of > the fabubus for rust prep. i can't nor have i ever been able to move the > seats back or forth. it has been like that everysince i bought it. now here > is the problem i know they slide forward off the tracks but how in the hell > am i supposed to do that? it is as if the latch thingy is broken. the > ratchet things don't seem to pullout of the notches. > > how do i get them out?