Hapy Seating (Part 2)

When the nice weather (read:camping weather) got behind us, I pulled Hapy off the road to swap out the seats. That was before we got a puppy and my wife changed jobs. I have been doing bus-related things when the rare opportunity presented itself, of course, but these seats just were not getting my attention. I have finally gotten these seats installed. So, today, I will wrap this up.

Out With The Old

Sprinter seats

Recall, we removed GratefulEd's donor seats and stowed them safely in my garage. They will go back to him as soon as these new seats are confirmed viable. The stock passenger seat is held in by a hook-loop between the seatback and the steel partition, and a pair of C-shaped mounts that point up. The seat was designed to remove quickly so you can access the tire jack usually stored beneath. You lift up on the front of the seat, folding it slightly, the hook on the rear slides out of the loop, allowing the seat to be lifted straight up. Pretty clever. The driver seat rides on 2 slides, and is held in place with a more modern toothed rail concept. Like a modern seat, the adjuster unlocks by lifting on a bar under the driver's right leg and then the seat can move front to back. If the bar is lifted and the seat is slid all the way forward, it slides right off the channels. Easy-peasy.

With the stock-ish seats out, we can consider the install of the new seats. In the 2016 Sprinter, these seats are mounted with M10 grade 10.9 (or grade 8 in SAE measures) bolts/nuts. Unable to source these at the local Ace, I had to patronize the Home Despot for fasteners. Moments like this I miss Orchards; their fastener department was massive, well stocked, clearly marked and there was room for multiple shoppers. Anyway, I mentioned in the last post that the "C" mounts for the passenger seat blocked a clean mock up of the new seat on that side. On Hapy, the inner mount was held on with 2 small (10mm head) bolts. The outer mount was welded on (presumably by a PO). So, I removed that one with my angle grinder, a hacksaw and a hammer/chisel. I generally do not like cutting original parts off the bus, but I am fairly sure the outer hook was supposed to be bolted in like the inner hook was, and a prior owner performed a repair or "improvement". I'm going with repair. The loop on the partition is held on with 2 more 10mm bolts. All of these parts dropped into a zip-lock baggie to be misplaced for the foreseeable future in my disaster of a garage. I'm not kidding; I have already lost track of this baggie.

While We're Here

Three of the most dangerous words when it comes to projects are "while we're here". Still, there are times when it makes sense to do something while you are there and things are exposed. For example, you need to remove the air cleaner to get to your spark plugs, so you replace the filter during the out-then-in. That didn't really increase the scope, and you were touching it anyway. In this case, I have very little interest in removing these seats again once they are in, but I know they will be out and back in again. Resisting the urge to do more, there are a few things worth doing while your seats are out. After pulling out the old passenger seat mounts, I spent a little time improving that seat pedestal. I cleaned up all the dust, debris and spent horsehair. I hit some surface rust with rust converter and then topped that with some spray paint. I do not have carpet yet, and I don't want to put the old pedestal wrap carpet (basically trunk carpet) back on. So, yeah, these seats will be coming back out for a carpet install. I hope to install that carpet before Summer travels begin, but it could just as easily happen years from now, which is why I did the rust-treat and paint.

 

Measure, Template, Mark, Repeat

templating

To determine the correct placement of the holes, I started with an 18" x 18" square cardboard template. This matches the length of the seat rails and the distance between their outer edges. I held this template against the bottom of the driver seat, and marked where the mount holes needed to be. Once bored out, the template was ready. I set the driver seat in place and to mark where the front of the seat rails needed to be. Hmm.. the new seat's seat rails are longer than the original. They are so much longer, in fact, that they hang off the front of the pedestal by about an inch so I re-drew the front holes on the cardboard template for the front mounts. The next available hole rearward is about 2 inches back. This places the new hole squarely within the pedestal. Since the seat location is not as clear from the front of the rails (due to the drop in the front before the end of the rail) as the rear of the rails, I marked the pedestal along the rear edges of the rails for the template to align to. After removing the seat, I aligned the template with these marks and then marked where the holes needed to be. 

I test fit and marked where I thought the holes should go and then measured for straightness. And then repeated that cycle until I had the planned seat mounts square. Before boring the holes, it is worth considering that 2 of these holes will pass through the wheel tub into the area where the tires are. Accordingly, getting bolts that are not too long is very important. I got 25mm long (M10 grade 10.9) bolts so they are long enough to pass through the rails, and the steel tubs without protruding very far into the wheel well. While there is enough thread on the bolt in the wheel well for the nut to bite, they are short enough that the tire could not possibly touch it. The passenger-side rear bolt, actually, just has enough thread on it for the nut to fully engage, with no part of the bolt protruding through. The pair of inside bolts, on the other hand, remain inside the seat pedestal. These nuts are hard to reach, but there is plenty of meat on the bolts for the nuts to grab onto. Once I have carpet installed, it will be quite difficult to get a socket on them. I will need to form a flap with the carpet so I can get in there.

 

One thing I found interesting while doing this: the stock driver seat is not square. The front edge angles slightly towards the center of the bus, so as you slide the seat forward, the seat slightly shifts towards the center. I did not duplicate this, but it is interesting.

 

Drillin'

My drill bits have not improved since the rear anti-sway bar install (See Handling the Handling - Rear Anti Roll Bar), so I slowly drilled the holes into the seat pedestals. I had intended to tap the holes so the bolts would thread into the seat pedestal before they were nutted from below. This plan was set aside when I considered how far under the seat the front bolts would be and how hard it would be to wrench them down. So, instead, I bored three them all the way out so the bolt would drop through the holes instead. I did tap the outer rear hole. Once all four holes were drilled out on the passenger side, I set the template in place and set the bolts through. They lined up perfectly. Sweetness.

both seats in. pardon the trash

With the holes for the passenger seat drilled out, I pretty much duplicated the hole locations for the driver side. On the driver side, I chose to drill straight through the original seat rails. I keyed off of an existing hole in the rear outer seat rail, since the template was almost there. The outer holes simply align with the template. This decision prevented some alignment issues, and also set the holes in spots where the original seat rail would not get damaged, and could still be used. This allows for a future decision to put original seats back in, and it provided a couple of additional layers of original German steel, adding to the strength of the overall install. I drilled out the 4 holes in the same stair-step method of drilling out the center hole with a super-tiny bit and bore it out wider with progressively larger bits until it's big enough for the bolt to drop through.

Driver Pedestal

Similar to the passenger pedestal, the driver pedestal got a clean-up, rust treatment and paint. Unlike the passenger side, however, the rust was more prevalent. I think the leak from that old plastic hose from the remote brake reservoir to the master cylinder caused it. So, I included some Eastwood Rust Encapsulator in the treatment. I got completely under the pedestal as well as the mount holes I had just drilled out.

 

Mount Up

With the holes drilled out, it was just a matter of patience getting the bolts in and tightened down. Since the front bolts are buried inside the seat rails, I started with them. I tipped the seat back a touch and wiggled the bolts into the runners so the bolts hung down. I set the seat in place, letting the front bolts fall into their holes. I figured these were harder to solve for than the rears, since I could slide the seat forward to get to those bolts. I lifted up on the seat adjuster and slid the seat forward enough to be able to directly manipulate the rear bolts. The inner rear bolt dropped through easily, and I was able to thread the rear outer bolt into the tapped hole. Once snugged, I threaded on the nut and tightened it down. Then, I set the nut onto the inner rear bolt and slid the seat back. The 2 front bolts were difficult to address with a wrench because the upper slider did not slide past them when the seat was most rear-ward. I was able to hold them in place with a bladed screw-driver while tightening the nuts from below, however. I accept that this means they may not be torqued down as much as any of us would like, but that's how it goes sometimes. Also, I omitted washers from the inner bolts, simply because I didn't have many.

Left Undone

The rear bolts on the driver side encountered some issues that I will need to address. The inner bolt hole intersected with a support rib, so a nut currently cannot fully seat. I need to get in there and trim the rib back. The driver-side outer bolt hole encountered a contour within the wheel well, preventing the nut from setting. This will be easier to resolve: bfh (big fn' hammer) to flatten the contour. I will solve these when I do the noise control steps since I will need to remove the driver seat anyway. I will include washers and will get the fasteners torqued down then too.

Test

At this point, both seats were in. So, Boo and I took a test drive. In our driveway. Without starting the engine. Okay, the test consisted of the two of us simply sitting in the seats, listening to the radio enjoying the new front speaker set up (See Returning to Hapy Sounds Part 1 and Part 2) and imagining the first camping trip. We will have a real test when Hapy is back on the road. I have moved Hapy around the driveway with the new seat. It is firm and supportive, but high. I can't tell yet if it's bad, it's just different. My feet can easily push the pedals all the way to the floor, so there is no safety issue. I will just have to get used to the higher viewpoint.

Tuukka's garage seat

As you can see from that last picture, I have started applying some noise control in the form of vibration deadening material onto the cab ceiling (some ResoNix, plus some leftover Noico). Of course, I am already asking myself whether I should remove those seat partitions, even without adding swivels, so the seats can recline farther. It seems like there is always something to do "next time". Perhaps the most important thing at this point is that I can return the old seats to GratefulEd. Tuukka, the dog, will very much miss them as they have been his go-to spot while hanging out with me in the garage.

 

My last 2 posts prior to this one contained a great deal of idea-mulling. As I just mentioned, I have started some efforts in the noise reduction space and will continue as time allows. Between clearing the spots where it will go in the bus and the careful application of it (lots of measuring and test fitting for the layers above the CLD), there's a lot of time spent which does not translate very well into posts. Still, I have a few other little things I have going on, so I will wrap those up around the noise-contain work so I don't go too many weeks without posting anything.

That's it for now. Thanks, as always, for following along-

Hapy Seating

Over the years, Hapy has had 3 sets of front seats. Today, I start down a path of a fourth, and hopefully final, set. For the curious, I continue to Bondo-cycle on the replacement front fender for Zed, as well as sort through the garage. Boo and I have been taking advantage of the waning days of "decent" weather (read: light rain, around 8*C / 45*F) to get some hikes in before late Fall weather really kicks in. So, large steps forward on any car project is not happening right now. Sometimes, you just need to spend some time on a project that you actually want to do. These days, neither the Zed nor my garage are that project, but they are each getting some of my attention. So, as a distraction from that, I'm looking at Hapy's seats.

Seats 1-3

the '74s

I suppose it makes sense to start with what Hapy has had for seating. First, he had his original manufactured-in-1971 seats. These were built before headrests, and while they looked the part, they were completely clapped out, sagging painfully across the entire seat base. The horsehair stuffing was mostly gone and the fabric was dry-rotting away. So, while I was still working in Old Town (an area of downtown Portland now called "the Pearl District") I bought a set of blue-green plaid 1974 seats off craigslist for $20.

The blue-green set were marginally better. Maybe. The seats had been rebuilt at some point with foam, but I discovered along the way that they were getting ditched for $20 for a reason: they were very uncomfortable. Still, they were the seats I had, and they had headrests for better neck protection in an accident. After a few months with them, though, I would have probably gone back to my originals if I had still had them.

A few years ago, GratefulEd swapped out his original 1973 seats with minivan seats (which look and seat great), so he loaned me his seats while I figured something out. The 1973 seats served GratefulEd just fine, but they, too, were worn out. The fabric is so destroyed that the simple aftermarket seat covers cling to the foam underneath, not the seat fabric. Again, these seats are not the most comfortable, but they are better than the '74 set. GratefulEd put many miles on these seats. For, like, 2k of those miles, I rode with him. Still, at some point he wants these back, and at some point I would like a seat that will improve the ride... like the seats he put in Belle.

New Seat, What a Treat

Yeah, I've used that line before. In my scouting around craigslist, I found a set of "comfort" front seats from a 2016 Sprinter for $250. The "comfort" seats are so labelled because they have things like angle control and lumbar support that the "standard" seats do not have. Coming from seats that were little more than an uneven pile of flattened foam wrapped in shredded cloth, these things are puh-lush. With an arm rest. I read reviews of these seats where authors described taking road trips of 8-12 hours and not suffering from leg or back aches or any additional fatigue they could assign to their seats. Sounds perfect, but are they 10x better than those old ratty '74 seats I bought 15 years ago? I think so.

I drove over to the seller in Hapy. Upon arrival, I pulled the front passenger seat out of Hapy and set the Sprinter seat in it's location. It fit well enough to know that it could probably work, and then I jumped in to test-sit it. Ultimately, figuring out how to mount it, deciding whether I go whole-hog and do a swivel-seat upgrade, etc, all only matters if the seat is comfortable for a long drive. Just because some random internet authors said so, doesn't mean it will work for Boo and me. Of course, sitting in a seat for a few seconds won't tell the story either. But, I liked the seats, so I paid the guy, put the seats in the back and headed home. Hapy ran great, by the way: no codes, no stammering; he just cruised and felt peppy.

So, Will It Fit?

extra surround
getting cut off

Before I go too deep into the install, there are some basics. The Sprinter seats are much taller and the bottom is much thicker than any of the stock bus seats. When I placed the seat in, the headrest sat about an inch or so below the ceiling. Because of the original mountpoints in the passenger seat pedestal, I could not position the seat on top of the inner flat very well. As a result, I could only sorta-kinda get a sense for how it would be before the inner seat rail slid down into the well in the middle of the pedestal. So, regardless of what I do, that old passenger-side mountpoint will need to get cut off.

A little concerned about how the driver-side would fit, I pulled the '73 driver seat out and set the Sprinter seat in its place when I got home. This made for a much better assessment because the stock driver seat is mounted with toothed sliders, not large C-hooks sticking up from the pedestal. Still, the height of the seat base wedged my legs under the steering wheel. I confirmed that the seat will be very comfortable, once I have figured out how to lower them. These are built for delivery drivers, service folks and RV's: designed to be sat in a lot for long periods, and Sprinter's are not cheap, so the seats are a reflection of that as well (read: these are good seats). I will not have to cut out the partition for the seats to fit, but removing the partition could make them more adjustable.

Seat Gets Trimmed

While I did not have to cut up the bus, I did have to cut a section of plastic off the seat base. These seats are adjustable in 3 ways: height, seat-back tilt, and seat-base tilt. The height is controlled with a lever on the outside along the base, and it raises / lowers the entire seat above the rails by as much as 3 inches. In the Sprinter, the seat is bolted to a pedestal that is smaller than the seat, so when it is lowered, the bottom plastic surround drops below/around that pedestal. This will not work in a bus installation, as the pedestal is larger than the seat.

new seat (with surround removed)
versus old seat

The plastic surround, however, seems almost designed for this modification. There is an indentation that runs along the lower edge of the cushion, maybe 3 inches above the bottom of the surround (see picture above). I scored this indentation repeatedly with a box-cutter until the lower section fell off, halving the plastic surround's height. The new now-the-bottom sets slightly above the seat rail at the seat adjuster's lowest setting. With this lower surround removed, the seat rests cleanly on the bus seat pedestal (see picture on the right). For a longer legged driver, there are now a few inches of headroom, if the seat needs to be raised.

Install Thinks

Boo and I would love to have at least the passenger seat swivel, if not both, to create more usable space while camped. But Hapy has steel partitions behind the front seats. Those partitions, I think, were critical for collision safety since the back of the passenger seat was literally mounted with a hook-and-ring connector thing to it, and the seat was unable to sit upright without leaning against it. Still, these partitions could also represent some stiffness in holding the sides  of the bus square against twisting or in case of an accident. So, we have a few options:

1. *Mount the seats in a forward-facing-only orientation, bolting the slider rails to the bus.
2. Remove the partition behind the passenger seat, install angle iron to take up the side-stiffness, install a swivel base and the seat. Driver side remains just like option 1.
3. Remove the partition, but don't install a swivel. Maybe, the seat is just removed, reversed and re-installed facing rear-ward when we camp? Maybe instead of using bolts, the seat is mounted with nuts on studs, making the reverse-swap that much easier.
4. Remove both partitions, install an angle iron for each side for side-stiffness, install a swivel on each side.
5. Blending options 3 and 4, remove both partitions, but don't install any swivels. One or both seats could be mounted rear-facing when camped.

both seats mocked

My biggest question for whether options 4 or 5 are possible circles back to the steering wheel. Unlike the passenger side, where there is a big open space for the seat back to go when you face it rearward, that wheel is big, and sticks pretty far back from the dashboard. Just looking at the picture on the right here tells the tale. It is hard to imagine that driver seat facing rearward. Frankly, I'm going to have to think carefully about how to just install the driver seat. Use of studs may be necessary simply for that. I asterisked option 1 since that's the most direct option that gets seats in. I can always grow from there. Knowing that any swivel is going to raise the seat more, all the others may not be real options.

Some Prep Is Universal

Regardless of what we choose to do, there are some universal steps I need to take. First, of course, is addressing any rust on top of the seat pedestals. I removed the pedestal carpet a few years ago, and need to re-install it or cut some fresh carpet to install there. I intend to add some noise reduction stuff while everything is open before the carpet goes back in. I would like to move the brake fluid reservoir down into that below-the-seat area to simplify things a little bit. This would also create more possibility for a driver-side swivel (though that is still very remote). I may need to cut off the old driver-side seat tracks, if I run into issues putting holes through for the Sprinter seat rails. On the passenger side, the pointing-up C-hooks need to be cut off. You can see how they interfere in the mock-up picture on the right, here: the seat is pushed further forward because of where the C-hooks are. All of these (except the carpet install) can be done while I mull-over whether I am going to cut off one or both partitions. 

Boo and I tried sitting the mocked up seats just like the picture above shows. Overall, they are very comfortable. They do sit high, though, for our shorter-than-average-for-a-US-person legs. I can fully activate the pedals all the way to the floor, though. For Boo, she may need something under her feet for longer drives so the leg-dangle doesn't negatively impact her lower back. I'm sure we have something that usually travels with us that could stow there which would meet that need. In the past, she has sat with her feet propped up on the dash, so a more permanent step isn't necessary. The partitions do impact the degree to which the seat-back can be tilted. For the driver, I'm not sure how much it matters. For a passenger who sometimes likes to sleep on the drive, this might lead us to removing that partition eventually. At this point, I am going to work on simply mounting the seats and leaving the partitions. We figure I can always circle-back around on removing a partition, but once it's gone, it's gone. Maybe there's a way to just lower the passenger-side partition a couple inches to enable a seat tilt.

That's it for today. I'll post more on this progress as there is some, leveraging the old "Part (x)" to keep them strung together. Thanks, as always, for following along-