Do Eurovan seats fit in Vanagons?

[Slimvest]

[campism]

A Eurovan front seat, like a non-Westy Vanagon seat, is about 1" taller than a Westy seat. Pictured below is a brown non-Westy seat next to my stock grey Westy seat. The brown seat on a swivel will be taller than a Westy seat on a swivel, just as my Eurovan seat is taller than the Westy seat by about one inch. If I get cold-and-snowed into my garage this week I'll get more pictures showing all three together.

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'87 Westy in Wolfram Grey Metallic

[rmcd]

True statement about different heights.

there are at least three different approaches described in this thread and all will yield different bun heights. And you also have to consider that a swivel seat has a different height than a fixed seat. And you can get at least two different eurovan seat cushion thicknesses. And there are early and late model eurovan seats with different rails. You do the permutations.

One option is to rebuild a Vanagon seat base with a early or late eurovan cushion. Genius. Wish I’d thought of this.

Another option is to shave the rail of a later model eurovan seat and use the existing Vanagon mount rails. Good luck when you hit the brakes and the slider doesn’t hold.

Another option is to drill and bolt a eurovan rail through a Vanagon track. Not sure about using early versus late eurovan seats for this one.

My option was a little more involved most because I’m a jackass. In my defense I didn’t want to rely upon non-oem bolts, i wanted the adjustable lumbar and I didn’t think to swap out the seat cushions. Plus I had early model eurovan seats.

I weld a swivel base where my Vanagon rails used to be for the passenger side. I then Welded a channel to the swivel and bolted the early model eurovan seat rail to it the new channel. The channel can be seen in the picture below. The drivers side was less involved and doesn’t include the added height of the swivel so it sits at a lower height.

Here is the only picture I have of the driver side channels. Again I’ll post more later.

And I can state through painful and personal experiences that there are at least two thicknesses of eurovan seat cushions. Guess I do have some pictures.

Here they are.

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VW LT40 build. Like a Vanagon but 30% larger in every direction and 40% slower even in metric.
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=749359&highlight=

[vwwestyman]

[campism]

This photo actually does not best illustrate the differences due to the grey seats having been stacked for storage and being somewhat deflated-looking as a result. Trust me, as they say.

Stock '87 Vanagon Westy seat on the left end, stock '86 non-Westy Vanagon seat in the center and '93 Eurovan seat on the right. Westy seat cushion is shorter front-to-back and lower in height. The other two are very similar to each other in fit and feel but the EV seat has cloth headrest, full recline and taller seatback.

The two taller seats will have your thighs closer to the steering wheel and your head closer to the ceiling relative to the Westy seat, but both provide much better thigh support and general comfort than a Westy seat, in my opinion.

Disclaimer: I listed the seat years since I am not familiar with all years and all versions of Vanagons and EVs and do not know how seats might vary year-to-year and within the same year in different models.
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'87 Westy in Wolfram Grey Metallic

[Slimvest]

This is great information. Thanks for the thorough feedback. I'll post comparison pics of mine once completed.
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'87 GL w/ Reimo top

[campism]

Well, this thread has prompted me to do something that I've needed to do since moving five years ago, build a rolling storage cart for the seats. No more squashage. One large Harbor Freight furniture dolly (about $17) and some scrap lumber and this now fits in the same "storage footprint" that the stacked seats did before. Yay!

I try to keep one garage rule for order: if it's not up off the floor, it's on wheels so it can be moved easily.

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'87 Westy in Wolfram Grey Metallic

[jimf909]

[Slimvest]

Got my seats in and drove the van 150 miles or so over a weekend trip. Seat bottom cushions were measured equal in height when compared to my original ones before I installed them in my van (after the EV seat rails were cut to fit the Vanagon, of course). Once in the van, I could tell the Eurovan seats were slightly higher based on my view of the instrument cluster. I'm guessing the foam is more rigid in the EV seats.

Overall, for $50 plus $40 for cleaning, I'm pretty happy. The EV seats were firm and had a little more bolster support side to side. I'll keep my OEM seats for a bit to make sure. I'm wondering if I could get a upholstery shop that could replace just the base foam on my Vanagon seats and reuse the covers. May still look into that since the EV seats I have don't have arm rests.
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'87 GL w/ Reimo top

[campism]

Now that you've entered the seating arena, you could also consider the Town & Country swap that's becoming popular. Our EV seats have pretty bad upholstery and, while my bride has plans to recover them, we'd just as easily consider something more up to date. You're lucky to have found the cheap EV seats. There was just the one pair when I was looking.
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'87 Westy in Wolfram Grey Metallic

[Slimvest]

[campism]

Not to get off track from the EV seats, but was the Uber ride in a Mopar van from '08-'15 (square-ish body) or was it older (jellybean body)? My '05 Dodge has the middle seats that are not as comfortable as the newer middle seats. Easy to tell the seats apart; the older ones are scooped and have seams that flare out from the center (pic below from my van) while the newer ones are flatter and have straight seams. Don't have a photo of that. Both seat versions have been used but the newer ones are the most popular.

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'87 Westy in Wolfram Grey Metallic

[Slimvest]

Not too sure, but Uber drivers have some restrictions on how old their cars can be. The seats looked like the one Small Car sells. Cloth version.

https://smallcar.com/vanagon/vanagon-direct-replacement-parts/seat-replacements.html
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'87 GL w/ Reimo top

[danfromsyr]

which you can get directly off fleabay for a few hundred$ less
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Black-Leather-Bucket-Seat...2891479045

[FarPoint]

[campism]

Should not matter. Whatever makes the seats fit into the tracks on a swivel should work to make them fit into the tracks that are mounted to a base with no swivel.
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'87 Westy in Wolfram Grey Metallic

[Gruppe B]

The 1999 seat tracks do not work with the Vanagon base tracks. You'll have to install the 1999 tracks to the Vanagon (remove existing Vanagon tracks).

No big deal and the 1999 seat tracks are way smoother than Vanagon.

I did this to a set of swivels. Ground off the Vanagon tracks and bolted in the full Eurovan seat tracks. Should work the same for non swivel

[FarPoint]

How is the stock vanagon front seat rail mounted to the floor?

[Gruppe B]

Vanagon seat rails are welded to the Van, same as the Vanagon swivels.

All Eurovan seat rails are bolted on

Cheers
Gruppe B

[philsrod]

Just installed a set of seats from a 97 ev. They are the same as the 99 ones you installed. Apparently there may be an early and late 97 version. I saw were someone said the 97's were the same as 93. Mine were same as your 99's. A nice improvement to the 1980 Vanagon.