Extra seating mount

[stiggs]

My van came with a extra captains behind the passengers seat. It goes in and out of the van relatively easy - mostly tends to collect dust in my garage. When its out it leaves a 1 inch tall steel base that seems to find the special spot in my knee when I am crawling around in the van. Its held down by 5 bolts that looks like it would take me about 5 minutes to pull out, but my fear is that there are nuts underneath that would bounce off my grey water tank and be impossible to put back in or my hope would be that they are threaded into the bottom of the van and I can take them out and put in some plastic plugs until such time I need - don't see carting anyone other than myself and my trusty Dalmatians anytime soon.

Anyone know how these are mounted?

[John Kalmbach]

The seat base is bolted to the van floor with 7/16" grade eight bolts, with large seat-belt style fender washers, and nylon lock nuts (sometimes referred to as "aircraft" nuts) underneath the van floor. You'll need to use a wrench on the nut as the bolt will only keep spinning if you don't. Some people have welded the nut to the washer and the washer to the bottom of the van floor so they can remove the bolts without having to have someone else under the van with a wrench. Know if you weld the nylon lock nut that you'll lose it's gripping power, so occasional checks to make sure the bolts are tight would be in order.

It might be necessary to remove the grey water tank if you can't reach the nuts by reaching above the frame from the center of the van towards the outside.

Good Luck!
John K.

[Ford_6L_E350]

I made a 'nutplate' for our 3rd seat. Simply a flat plate with holes in the appropriate places and the nuts welded to it. Then I screwed that plate to the bottom of the van.

When the seat is out (most of the time) I put stainless steel flat head screws in the mounting holes, both the keep debris out of the threads and to seal the holes.

Mike

[stiggs]

Thanks for the replies, going to hold off on getting under there for now, I like the idea of the nut plate, might have to try that.

[deminimis]

When I've tried welding a regular nut, the nut has always lost its temper and quickly became unusable (spalling and binding as it was used). However, "weld nuts" are available (flanged ones are something of a combined nut/washer that allow the welding to occur on the washer part and thus preventing the over-heating of the working/nut part).

Here is an example of a lighter duty flanged weld nut to give you an idea.

[Ford_6L_E350]

One advantage of nutplates (and a small warning) is the other bolts hold the plate when you tighten a bolt - you don't need to have a wrench under the vehicle once it is in place. The warning part is not to tighten one bolt until the others are installed to keep the plate from twisting. The screws the hold the nutplate up are just to hold it in place while you remove and install the bolts.

My third captain's chair is on the passenger side. That meant I had to remove an exhaust heat shield from under the floor before I could install the nutplate. Your van/installation may be different.

Mike