Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2000 07:51:29 -0800
Reply-To: "Buettner, Peter" <PGB@DOLBY.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: "Buettner, Peter" <PGB@DOLBY.COM>
Subject: Re: '90 Vanagon Jump Seats and Rear Bench/Bed
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
Hi Michael,
Do you have part numbers for the bottom brackets? I went to the dealer and
ordered all the brackets the parts guy had on his microfiche. But they
don't fit into each other. I basically got two kinds of brackets. One has
a short round cup welded on a plate, the other one has a longer oval shaped
cup on a steel plate.
I got the following part number:
255-887-225-C oval shape
225-887-225-A round shape
Can you make sense out of this?
Thanks,
Peter
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Snow [mailto:mwsnow@HOME.COM]
Sent: Wednesday, March 22, 2000 6:16 AM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Re: '90 Vanagon Jump Seats and Rear Bench/Bed
I'm not sure if I'm painting the correct picture here. The seat I have is
from a Carat model. It is a removable seat that faces to the rear when
installed. There is a system of brackets attached to the right side battery
box/seat pedestal and 2 anchors in the van floor that stay with the van when
the seat is removed.
When the seat is in the van, it is attached to this anchor/bracket system
at 3 points. One is a spring-loaded latch on the bar at the top of the
battery box. The other 2 points are the floor anchors. There are no bolts
holding the seat in when it is installed. It is held in by gravity. A
properly seat-belted passenger would also contribute to seat retention.
The factory floor anchors consist of 2 pieces that fit back-to-back on
opposite sides of the floor, like a sandwich. The bottom piece (outside the
van) is a flat plate with a short pipe welded to the center of its face with
the open end pointing perpendicular to the face of the plate. The upper
piece (inside the van under the carpet) is a flat plate with a hole in the
center. The short pipe fits nicely into this hole. The plates are welded
to the body, and to each other, making a very rigid and sturdy mount point
for the "legs" of the seat frame.
At the bottom of the seat frame are protrusions that look like steel dowel
pins. They are not threaded. The factory installation provided
tight-fitting plastic caps that fit between the dowel pins and the "socket"
created by the floor anchors to ensure a snug fit with no squeaking.
I intend to reproduce this system in the closest way possible. I am
assuming that the lateral forces on the floor anchoring points could be very
high in a collision. I think the anchor plate system is necessary for
secure mounting. The van floor alone could not provide a fraction of the
rigidity and durability of the proper anchors. If the weight of the seat
and passenger were allowed to bear directly on the floor with no plate to
spread the load, it would likely deform the floor to the point where the
entire mount system would be compromised over time.
Mike Snow
Camp Pendleton, California
1982 Westfalia 1.6TD
1983 ASI 1.6D
> I suspect you misunderstood what Chris was saying. You don't anchor the
> legs to the wooden floor, you cut the floor away anchor through the
> metal floor. On the other hand... I would probably weld it also. I
> always over build no matter what I am working on. Just kinda like that.
> Haven't had anything fall down yet.
>
>
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