LHD front seat fixings

[jkhackney]

Hi,
I’m rebuilding my right-hand-drive Dormobile with left-hand drive and the front seats have decided not to fit.

The catch on the driver’s seat that releases it to recline can be switched without issue, and the seat can then be moved from the right to the left.

But the rear fixing rail of the double-wide front seat is not symmetric and simply placing it on the right side interferes with the new position of the driver’s seat. The rear mounts of the two seats would need to overlap, or else there is a gap between the seats of about 1-1.25″. Initially I had thought that the rear rail could simply be flipped around, but it is an “L” section, not a flat plate, and flipping it around would not let it brace against the seatbox as it should. I could mount the driver’s seat tab on top of the seat bracket, but then the right seat rail of the driver’s seat would sit 1/2″ too far forward.

I want to know how this was resolved in LHD Dormobiles: If the LHD Dormobiles had a reversed seat mount, or if the RHD mount was modified in some way. I don’t want to modify the piece if I don’t have to, in case someone wants to rebuild a RHD Dormobile out of it in 100 years.

Thanks for any pictures or descriptions
-Jeremy

[jkhackney]

Hi,

The solution was quite simple, actually. The RHD angle bracket can be used on the LHD vehicle by positioning it exactly as it would be originally, just slid over to the right edge of the car. The first bolt hole in the angle bracket is aligned with the second hole from the RH door of the original station wagon seating. This offsets the first seat hinge 11.5cm from the B-post, exactly as it is in the RHD configuration. The driver’s seat has to rest on top of the passenger seat angle bracket and the tab holding the driver’s seat down to the seatbox can be mounted in exactly its usual orientation, with its big hole aligned with the last bolt on the angle bracket. I drilled the angle bracket for the smaller hole in the tab and put in a fresh 5mm screw. The driver’s seat is level because its other keeper tab is also mounted on an angle bracket.

Switching the driver’s seat release lever from the right to the left side of the seat was easy. Re-fitting the underseat toolboxes and their covers has been difficult because the angle iron interferes.

-Jeremy

[jkhackney]

Here are pictures:
[attachment=0:ydxe79fb]lhd5.jpg[/attachment:ydxe79fb]
^The driver’s outboard seat tab. I don’t know how it originally looked but the one I have is rivetted to an angle bracket and attached with two bolts. It just needed a bit of filing to fit in its new LHD position, here. I had freshly painted it but I didn’t wait long enough before installing it and got my grubby fingers all over the tacky paint 😡
[attachment=1:ydxe79fb]lhd3.jpg[/attachment:ydxe79fb]
^The modification to the RHD brackets for LHD: stacking the seats. It works OK, just displacing the inboard driver’s seat rail about 5/16″ forward (this tab should butt against the vertical lip of the seat box).
[attachment=2:ydxe79fb]lhd2.jpg[/attachment:ydxe79fb]
^I put these extra holes in the angle bracket, thinking I wouldn’t be able to reverse the seatbox bolts in the seatbox lip to make clearance because of my carpet trim on the back side of the seatbox, and that the bolts would have to go through the angle bracket. It was unnecessary as I was able to turn the bolts around and cut off the excess length under the carpet trim such that the nuts fit under the carpet trim, and the bolt heads fit behind this angle bracket, as they’re supposed to in a Dormobile. Now I’ve got these ugly holes 😕
[attachment=3:ydxe79fb]lhd1.jpg[/attachment:ydxe79fb]
All the holes for the original Station Wagon seats will be temporarily filled with silicone, bolts, and/or rivets until I can find some nice rubber stoppers (bungs, I think you say in U.K.?). The seat bolts will also all be siliconed to reduce the chance of water getting between the aluminum and the steel and accelerating the galvanic corrosion. All that is left of the floor beneath the rear seats of the original Dormobile tub is a spider web of aluminum!

-Jeremy

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