Seeking info on 92-96, 4x4 5.8L V8

[simplesez]

Nice score. PM sent.

[86Scotty]

Nice. Looks super clean inside too. Just FYI, between the steering wheel and the floor plan behind many of the driver's swivels in SMB's are more or less useless. You might get it sideways with lots of effort including opening the driver's door, raising the tilt and placing it just right but I never used the ones on driver's seats because they're just too much trouble.

[THaley]

Originally Posted by 86Scotty

Nice. Looks super clean inside too. Just FYI, between the steering wheel and the floor plan behind many of the driver's swivels in SMB's are more or less useless. You might get it sideways with lots of effort including opening the driver's door, raising the tilt and placing it just right but I never used the ones on driver's seats because they're just too much trouble.

This actually makes a lot of sense. My reasoning is that if a swivel was put on the chair, it's gotta be able to spin. The factory wouldn't have included it with no way to turn. At least thats my logic anyway. I only need 90 degrees out of it. That way it's essentially an extension of the couch. It wasn't the floor plan I was after, but the owner was willing to make me a deal on the price I couldn't turn down. I need to figure out the tilt and see with that allows the chair to turn. Otherwise, I am planning to use my angle grinder to cut away some of the large black metal bare at the back of the chair. Its only a tiny bit that needs to be removed.

[86Scotty]

Cool, if you aren't afraid to modify it you'll get it to work for you. With that floor plan your idea makes a lot of sense. Try working with it from outside the van with the driver's door open. IIRC on my 95 even on the passenger side I had to open that door, fix the seat where I wanted it adjusting the slide and the back, then re-close the door slamming it hard to get it to close. Not perfect but any seat that swivels at all is far closer to perfect than one that does not.

I just had a thought. If the seat belt base supports (tall plastic things that hold the female belt latch beside the seat) are intact be very careful with them when swiveling your seats. Once they break, and they all break, you will never find replacements for them at this age. They are a long gone no-longer-produced part.

[Timerider]

I'm going to echo 86Scotty/Eric's comments here. Even with other SMB floorplans (such as the RB-50), swiveling the driver's seat can be a challenge. After a little experimentation, I figured out that the driver's seat of our 2002 (modified) RB-50 SMB can ONLY be swiveled 90° with the driver's door OPEN, seat back fully UN-RECLINED, and the fore-aft adjustment in EXACTLY the right spot. Even then, I usually have to adjust the fore-aft slider somewhere in the middle of the rotation process.

For us, the downside is that anyone sitting in this chair will tend to hit the horn in the middle of the steering wheel with their left elbow, but I'm thinking about installing an automatic interlock switch to disable the horn whenever the seat has been rotated out of its forward-facing position. Your floorplan is of course quite different, and the idea of using the seat as a "couch extension" sounds brilliant!

Provided of course that no long-legged individuals are tempted to "put their feet up" on the steering wheel . . .

[neatvan]

Welcome! Great looking van.

[carringb]

The 5.8L response VERY well to a cat-back exhaust and removing the intake restoration, including over the air filter in the air filter box. My ‘94 sucked hot air in direct from the engine bay, so I added a fresh air duct below the bumper. I think they fixed that for ‘95.

[THaley]

I ended up cutting the black bar on the back of the drivers seat at an angle so that the chair can turn 90 degrees. Its essentially extends the couch and allows for an extra seat. The seat unfortunately is at an angle. The passengers seat has a completely different base and is easier to operate. All in all I am happy with it. It opens up the front of the van. We are a family of four and having the extra space is nice.

Got everything in the van working this weekend. AC is a touch on the cool not cold side, but I am going to dig into that this week. Water, Hot Water Tank, Stove, Fridge, Awning, everything works as it should. Finished replacing all the bulbs with LED. I have a short in the overhead light above the driver and passenger. It is temperamental to say the least. Got my exterior shower hooked up and the only things I am missing at this point is a lug nut wrench.

Drove two mtn passes. Was rolling hard at 45mph up to the divide. Slow mover! But we will see if I pull all the smog stuff or not. Thinking that will allow me to have slightly more power, and way less crap under the hood.

[THaley]

CarringB, can you provide a bit more detail? I am interested to understand what would be involved and what gain I would see from it.

[carringb]

I insalled a Magnaflow RV muffler with 3" tailpipe. I also added a pair of high-flow cats, as the previously owner has replaced the stock cat with a test pipe. I have zero desire to breathe high-CO emissions when I'm stuck in traffic or otherwise have to idle. There's good large-chamber single-cats available now, but 2 smaller ones worked the best for me at the time. The stock exhaust on mine was 2-into-1 at the cat, then single-in, single-out at the muffler. This configuration does seem to vary.

At the intake... My air-cleaner box had a snout connected to it, which drew the intake air from under the hood. The snout plugged into the air cleaner, and had a flap which covered half the air filter. Pretty tight too. That half never got dirty. So I just trimmed the flap away. The "snout" had a bullet shaped cone blocking it's intake, for noise reduction. But it blocked about 2/3 of the intake area. So that went in the garbage. The 2 intake mods plus a K&N filter made a huge difference, but I'd still notice a loss of power in hot weather. That's when I added a cold-air intake, make from a clothes-drier duct-kit, hose clamped to the snout of the intake box. Yours might already pull cold air from the fender. If so, you can skip this mod.

With all that done, I pulled a 8,000# trailer all over the country. Only Eisenhower on I-80 westbound would drop me into first gear. Most grades I could pull 55+ with the trailer, and never had trouble maintaining the speed limit without the trailer. It ended up making more power that stock 460 motor.

All in all, that van could pull the old TT about as well as my current V10 pulls my current trailer. Of course, this van weighs about 2,500 pounds more, and my current trailer is about 2/3 heavier (130,000+) compared to the old trailer. And the V10 has way better engine braking. It'll descent hills without touching the brakes, that would smoke the brakes on the old van.