I'm putting a Glide Engineering seat in my '35 Ford coupe. I needed a seat that would fold forward for rear access -- and the recliner feature sounded kinda comfy, too. I have a Bengles in my '29 and am very happy with it -- but Bengles had gone dark for awhile and I had to move on. The recliner handle on the side of the Glide is black plastic. It's really cheesy. The handle is splined and is held in place by a simple screw that's tapped into the splined post. Size-wise, it looks a LOT like the splines on 50's - 60's era window crank handles. Has anyone found a substitute for these plastic handles? Something chrome? Metal? And stylish? Thanks
I have a customers 40 Ford Coupe in the shop now. I`ll see what I can dig up. I have a couple hundred handles in my stash.
Agreed @Detonator the glide release handle looks like it belongs on a Honda. We took ours off and put a pull release under the front edge of the seat .then made a new cover to hide the hinge mechanism , covered that in old leather . Deception complete. We cant recline ours in the 3W but i presume it still does recline.
Many wagons of the 50's-70's have a splined chrome handle on the inside of the tailgate, most held in by a central screw, which look neat. Also, seat adjusters on 40's GM cars had a similar set-up.
Can you measure shaft diameter and spline, comparison can be made to other things. The one on the seat might just be off a honda
Good idea Denny you could grind the splined shaft square, and use a stock inside door handle couldn't ya?
For starters, you need to count the splines and measure the tooth diameter and minor diameter at the base of the teeth. I have one of those cheap, digital calipers and I find it handy to measure something with it just about every week. I saw sellers on the net and they mention size and tooth count, etc. I doubt the splined shaft is a one of a kind. There's bound to be a crossover from something. Besides car window and interior handles, a lot of vintage bathroom faucet handles were splined. Might be worth a try.
I bought about 100 matching used interior handles that are all the same style. Used. The splines fit. The interior door handle would work but is a bit big. The wing window crank is the right size wise but the knob would need to be trimmed down. The handles would need a hole drilled for the mounting screw.
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