Date:         Thu, 13 May 2010 15:50:05 -0500
Reply-To:     Jim Felder <jim.felder@GMAIL.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Jim Felder <jim.felder@GMAIL.COM>
Subject:      Instructions for installing middle seat tracks and rails in a
              westy
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

You'll need a way to get under the car, a circular saw, the usual hand
tools, a set of seat tracks and the fasteners for those tracks, a marker, a
tape measure and a straight edge and some 2" wide painter's tape. The tape
will allow you to mark accurately for the cuts, and will help the carpet cut
cleanly. You will need a very long 3/16th (approximately, it just has to fit
through the center of a 13mm bolt hole--that's a head size of 13mm, not
shaft diameter) drill bit, about a foot long I believe. You will use the bit
to drill up through the bolt holes in the bottom of the van to locate the
center of the pieces you are going to remove. It's tight up against body
crossrails, and the drill body will interfere with these if you don't have a
really long bit.

When the instructions refer to bolt holes in the floor, realize that every
vanagon ever made, as far as I know, has the bolts for this welded into the
metal of the floor. The trick is to remove two sections of wood that cover
the holes in such a way that when the sliding seat trays are dropped in,
their holes align exactly with the fastener holes. It isn't difficult if you
can mark and measure carefully.

First pull out the fridge unit so you have access to the whole width of the
floor board. Take off the front (door side) trim.

Go underneath with the long drill and locate the fitting welded into the
floor where the floor track will be. This will be obvious as there will be
two rows of them across the car in about the middle of the rear area. Once
you have drilled up through the two fasteners near the door, measure over
the width of the floorboards and then go below to locate the corresponding
pair. You don't want to go all the way to the driver's wall because there's
no point in removing the plugs. You are not going to use them because the
seat rail won't reach them.Start at the ones just inside the door and drill
up through the floorboard. You are drilling through a plastic plug. After
you get the floorboard strips removed, you can remove all of the plastic
plugs from the top with with a phillips head screwdriver. But, until you can
remove the wood flooring, you must very carefully mark where you are going
to cut, and for now must be content with drilling as small a hole through
them as is feasible. You don't want to break the drill bit off, but you
don't want to big a drill either. Just something large enough to find the
hole in the carpet to use as a point of measurement. If you drill too large
a hole in the plastic plug, you will just spin the plastic plug and it will
not want to come out. You will also have drilled out the molded phillips
head pattern in the top. So, use as small a drill as you can.

Lay down a strip of tape over all four holes, running fore and aft, each
about ten inches long. Punch down over the hole to locate it in the tape.
This will create your four reference points. Now run masking tape across the
floor of the van between the marks. Now measure the width of the seat rail
tray where it drops into the slot (not at the edges of the flanges). Look at
the end and you will see this for yourself. The flanges down both edges of
each piece are meant to cover the edge of the channel and embed in the
carpet.

Measure this distance, divide it by two, and mark this distance out from
your reference holes. Connect the marks across the width of the floor with a
line from the straight edge. The material between these lines is what you
will saw away.

Use the open area between the floorboard and the wall to set the depth of
the circular saw to saw through the bottom of the wood without touching the
metal and ruining the blade. It can be done. If you are worried about this,
leave yourself a 64th or so and get the last with a knife blade. Lift the
strips out and you will see all the plastic plugs that can now be removed.

Simply screw in all the track pieces--they will only go in one way--and
replace the stove and fridge. Slide the seat in for reference before you do
final tightening on the rails.

Email me for pictures or let me know where I can post them.

Jim