Once upon a time...

Once upon a time...
Christmas 2016

Monday 12 July 2010

Camper Part 30: Frankenseats 1

And you all thought I'd forgotten about the camper.

It's been a bit of a juggling act with all my projects, but I tend to switch when I get stuck for one reason or another.

For the camper I figured I needed some swivelling seat bases. Having also once been the proud owner of a Volvo 960 with electric memory seats, I knew that these would be much nicer than that standard Sprinter seats. Especially in leather with a heater element.

Well, I managed to get some of the appropriate leather seats from Pete & Roger, and keeping an eye out on Ebay I managed to land a set of Ford Galaxy (same as the Seat Alhambra and VW Sharan) swivelling front seats at a decent price.

Then the surgery began. I stripped down the Galaxy seats to get at the swivel. Lots of measuring later I had figured out how to mate these to the Volvo seats and Sprinter bases. It's really handy that the sliding base unbolts from the Volvo seats allow easy working in the workshop (I only figured this out part way through the build though - which has been ongoing since December).

I ran into some trouble with one of the bases so had to aquire another seat from Roger. Luckily this was another driver seats which allowed me to fit both seats with the memory module and motors (the passenger seat is electric, but no memory).

Last night I eventually managed to finally assemble the frankenseat bases. The pictures below show a partially dismantled base while I was replacing the motors, followed by the two assembled bases.

Seat base showing motorsSeat base showing motor fixingsSeat base showing motor fixings
Frankenseat base 2Frankenseat base 1

The next instalment will see these fitted to the camper. Version 1 will have electrical control but no swivel as I still have to make a handle for releasing the safety catch. I do however need to use the vehicle so need to get the seats in.

No comments:

Post a Comment