Howdy,
I have a 2000 SE with a manual driver's seat. If you too have this seat then read on. Those of you with SVT's or power seats are already set.
Don't know about you but I found the manual seat to be more than a little lacking in lower back support.
I almost bought an ATX SE with a power driver's seat just so I could have the convenience and comfort of an adjustable lumbar support. In the end the MTX SE stole my heart, lumbar or no.
After a while I got to thinking: the seats are virtually identical; perhaps it might be possible to modify my standard manual seat to give it adjustable lumbar.
A trip to Tasca Ford and the patience of a kind parts department staffer bore out my suspicion and I ordered the following parts:
XS2Z*5462222*AA (the lumbar support guts)
and
XS2Z*54613E69*BAC (the adjustment handle)
These are both parts for '99 Contour (non SVT) power driver's seats.
The pics below tell the rest of the story.
Well maybe not, I don't know how to embed jpegs in this post or whether it is possible.
Verbally and in a nutshell:
Remove the drivers seat. Take it inside where it's cool and air conditioned. Remove the seat back ( the lower plastic side panel of the seat pops off after you remove the recline handle and a screw underneath it).
Unsnap the ziplock like seat frabric fasteneres on the seat back and peer inside. You will see a red nylon plastic covered wire frame. This is the lumbar support. It unsnaps from the seat frame at the top and bottom. Remove it. Now install your new adjustable lumbar guts. They snap in the same way the only difference being the two wing hooks which must be teased into place underneath the foam for the side bolsters and hooked onto the frame tubing. This takes a little finagling but it will go.
Reinstall the seat back onto the lower seat and route the cable for the adjuster underneath the flange for the recline mechanism.
Now take the plastic cover panel for the side of the lower seat and drill a hole large enuff for the twist and insert cable adjustment mechanism just forward of the handle for the recline adjuster. You will also have to make two cutouts horizontally to accept the locking tabs. Now take the cable adjust mech and drill two small holes at either end of the teardrop flange (you'll use these to lock the mechanism in place on the plastic side panel with two small sheet metal screws).
Twist and lock the mechanism in place. From the back and using the two small holes you just made in the flange of the mechanism as a guide drill throught the panel as well.
Reinstall the panel, and secure the flanges of the lumbar mechanism with two small sheet metal screws. Pop the handle on it and you're almost ready to go. In addition to all the above I also had to fashion a clip from a coat hanger to lock the forward part of the seat side panel in place (the lumbar mechanism does press into the lower seat bolster a bit). I merely drilled a small hole on the forward anchor buttress and bent a bit of coat hanger to latch onto the metal receiving plate. Works just fine.
Well that's it. Give it a try if you find the support on your manual seat lacking!
rhogue islander
