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Sat Dec 24, 2005 5:00 pm

i just got a vanagon and i noticed that the bars that you connect the bench seat to are different lengths is the back one supposed to be longer or do you think that the previous owner did that :?:

Sun Dec 25, 2005 11:28 am

also if you have any info can you tell me how to put the seat in the car
(sorry i am clueless :shock: )nuthin in my noggin

Sun Dec 25, 2005 12:16 pm

I think thats the way they are, you are refering to the middle seat correct???
It's a Westfalia camper , right?
I've never had the removeable seat, but a friend of mine has and I remember seeing the rails being different.
:D

Sun Dec 25, 2005 10:31 pm

I too have seen an extra seat bench in the Westy. I've been trying to locate one, but I think they are custom made. I'd love to have one, it would keep my 3 year old triplet boys from fighting.

Mon Dec 26, 2005 8:06 am

I have an '85 westy with the third seat. My rails seem to be the same lenght, cabinet to door threshold. Mine has covers over the rails outside of where the seat sits.

Its been awhile since I have seen a GL bus, but dont their seats slide in and out the same way? I'll be goin by the folks today, i'll look over the project syncro to see what it has.

My Christmas gift..looks like i'll be needing the third seat by august :D

Mon Dec 26, 2005 11:04 am

Congrats, don't give up the van. :lol:

Mon Dec 26, 2005 4:24 pm

Buspor63: Congrats... great gift... they don't get any more personal or special. :wink:

I'm new to Vanagons too but I know what TeamSpork is talking about. In the '85 7 seater I just acquired, the middle bench seems to want to slide in on the rails and bolt in place. The front rail is short enough that the cutouts in the carpet would allow me to slide the seat over the rail, but the rear rail extends underneath the carpet. How is that seat supposed to install? Am I missing something obvious? :?: What happened to the good ol' days when you just needed that set of funky bolts (that were always missing) and a few slotted holes in the floor? :shock:

I'd ask the previous owners, but they jumped on a ship to New Zealand and left the middle bench sitting in their garage.

Wed Dec 28, 2005 2:12 pm

So no hints on how to install the middle bench seat and why the mounting rails are different lengths :?:

Paul

Wed Dec 28, 2005 2:49 pm

You need to roll the carpet back to get to the rail. I got tired of doing this and "trimmed" the carpet so I could remove the seat without removing the whole carpet. Some carefully placed sheet metal will help the rails slide over the carpet without damaging it. After having the van for a year I finally installed correct color Z bed and middle seat that folds. The old middle seat with center armrest makes a great loveseat in the basement.

Wed Dec 28, 2005 3:35 pm

Thanks... It seemed odd that the carpet is cut so that I can get at the front rail easily, but I would have to do some serious carpet removal to get the seat on the back rail... unless I'm being clueless and missing something obvious. It's not covered in the owner's manual... I wonder if it's in Bentley; I have Bentley for bugs, split busses, and bays, but I've never dealt with these "newfangled" vans before! :wink:

Paul

Wed Dec 28, 2005 10:10 pm

I still havent been over to see the project syncro, but I did check in my '85 GL parts bus. The PO removed the seat and rails, but I could see from a filler he put down that the back rail was the same length as the front.

Does your back rail go from wall to door opening? Could the PO have moved things around? My bus has the padding on the floor that kinda gives an idea of where things go. Is your floor carpet original? Is the padding still there?

Thu Dec 29, 2005 2:35 am

not sure why the rails are different length, my hunch is so you can slide it on one rail ata time instead of having to line up both at once?

i installed a bench seat in my 82 westy using the rails from a passenger van. here are the basic steps i took:

-take out carpet
-there are bolt holes in the floor already with plastic plugs in them. lift up the plywood subfloor enough to find, mark the location on the plywood
-i marked lines on the floor to cut out of the plywood. mine are about 3 inches wide and run from the door to the cabinets. to do this i jammed thin strip of wood under the plywood to raise it off the metal floor a bit, then raised my circular saw to just cut the approx 1/4 needed to cut through. careful not to cut through the metal floor at all. yo may need to trim some plywood by hand due to the cabinet getting in the way of the saw.
-you should now have 2 channels cut out from the plywood that run from door to cabinets. take ot plastic plugs and install tracks. 2 of my bolt holes actually had welded bolts in them, i ground them off to allo the tracks to seat properly. install tracks and see how things work. put the rails in, i think my short rail went in front (i'll check tomorrow).
-once everything worked properly i took it one step further. removed the rails and rinstalled the carpet and then bolted the rails over the carpet (trough some bolt-holes i poked in the carpet). this gave it a finished look that is virtually invisible with my small doormat carpet over the rails with the seat removed. i had to put a couple small slices in the carpet at the cabinet end of the rails so it laid flat.
- i use rails and track interchangebly in this sorry for any confusion. i;m happy to answer any questions. i love the middle seat and actually being able to talk to my friends in the back!

Thu Dec 29, 2005 10:40 am

In my '85 GL, the back rail is probably about 6" longer than the front. There are bolts that attach the rail to the floor, and 4 of those have brackets to bolt the seat in place. The brackets on the front rail and back rail line up, but the back rail continues toward the sliding door and has one more bolt at the end. The carpet looks original and is cut so it can be folded out of the way to slide the seat in but the cuts end where the front rail ends... the back rail continues underneat uncut carpet. I hope that makes sense... I should have taken a pic.

The padding and carpet look stock and nothing looks like it was modified. I considered cutting the rear rail to the same length as the front rail and I'm sure it would work fine (and look better than cutting the carpet), but since it looks factory original I hoped I could find out how it is supposed to work rather than doing the hack mods to it! :) I don't have a problem modifying VWs, but the VW engineers weren't dummies and so I like to understand how it's supposed to work before I start modifying. I've spent too much time on old VWs undoing POs "improvements" so that things actually work right!