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Old 01-06-2020, 05:37 PM   #1
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Raising Driver and Passenger Seats 2005 E350

I'm in the process of raising my driver and passenger seats after installing swivel bases. I've finished the passenger seat and will be doing the driver's seat next.

I fabricated the spacers from 2" x 3" structural steel rectangular tube. I added spacer nuts to the top and bottom of the spacers in order to lift the passenger seat by a total of 3 3/4" in order to facilitate my wife's transfer from her wheel chair. I may only raise the driver's side 3" (or possibly even 2") since going higher may impinge on my leg/steering wheel room.

In any case, it was a fairly easy job once I worked everything out and the structural steel spacers are as strong or stronger than anything in the seat or base. I held off on painting them until I was sure that everything fit OK.

And the bonus -- it gave me an excuse to buy a 7" grinder at HF to cut the steel tube since my 4" grinder just wasn't up to it!

PS. I purchased my swivel bases here:

https://www.discountvantruck.com/rvv...dseatbases.htm
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Seat Base Spacer.jpg  

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2005 E350 Super Duty Ext Wheelchair Van
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Old 01-06-2020, 06:24 PM   #2
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I forgot to mention that the geometry of the seat tilt is such that the top holes need to be moved forward by 9 degrees (using the bottom holes as the vertex of the angle) if you want or need to maintain your original forward and back limits of your seat adjustment. If the top holes are simply in line with the bottom holes your seat will be mounted a little further back than it originally was. This distance is directly proportional to how high you raise the seat. In my case it was about 3/4". This probably isn't significant for most people but, in our case, the shift to the rear would impinge on the wheelchair lift behind the passenger seat.
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Old 01-07-2020, 08:55 AM   #3
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Nice write up on solving your height needs.

Re: buying the swivels - I am bummed you missed one of the Group Buys I do here about four times a year, would have saved you a bit of $$.
Link: http://www.sportsmobileforum.com/for...hem-15888.html
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Old 01-07-2020, 09:13 AM   #4
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I wouldn't recommend going higher than 2" with the driver's seat or your legs will be really close to the steering wheel even in the full up tilt position.
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Old 01-07-2020, 10:50 AM   #5
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Thanks, Ray and Lilnuts2, and, I agree that 2" is probably as high as I'll want to go. I'm just under 6' tall and I do feel pretty low at the stock height. I'll experiment a bit in the driveway with some wood blocks first.
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