Chrysler Van Seat Swap

From Fozzee.net

For some time, the drivers seat in Dave's 1994 Chrysler Town & Country has been a bit out of whack. I noticed once while riding with him that the seatback wouldn't go into the fully upright position. He explained that at one point, it broke and that this was the upright position, relative to the controls.

Upon further inspection, it was determined that the seat would need replaced, as the internal supports were bent and torn directly above the pivot point, on the inboard side. The result was that the seat back laid clear back, tipping slightly inwards. After a bit of research, it was determined that the seat would need replaced, as well as slid back a bit from the stock position, to give Dave additional clearance.

At first, we started searching for a replacement seat in the junkyard and whatnot. We quickly discovered that recovering a powered, matching, leather seat was going to be expensive, and Dave really didn't care about the adjustability, save that it had to be moved back a few inches. A month later, I realized that his van had Quad seats (That is, had captains chairs (Almost identical to the front ones) in the middle positions.

It turns out that the middle seats aren't quite like the front seats, I suspect because the front seats are power, and the rears aren't The power mech itself controls tilt, slide and tip, but is an integral part of the top of the seat itself.

We ended up removing the entire power mech (as well as what would be the manual slide rails) with 1/4" solid strap. This eliminated all the adjustments, save the recline function that's built into the replacement seat upper. The straps bolt to the stock front position pedestal, and to the bottom of the seat upper. We reused bolts where we could, and replaced a few with some graded bolts I had lying around. These bolts have a ton of load on them, and it's no place to cut corners.

Initially, we'd intended to bolt the replacement seat directly to the top of the pedestal, and to put the rails between the pedestal and the floor, so that all the adjustment was on the bottom. This plan failed for two main reasons: First, the bolts through the floor were enormously tight as well as rusty.

Secondarily, due to both the rust and the length of the bolt sticking through, I couldn't get a socket (and therefore the impact gun) on them to break them loose. We decided that it was just way easier to move the adapter to the top of the pedestal, leaving it in the stock position. This had the added benefit of giving us a bit of tilt aft, an adjustment that we'd eliminated with the power mech.

In the end, we had a bit of trouble locating the bolt holes to mount the seat-adapter unit to the pedestal, but we were able to rectify this by removing the lower portion of the seat from it's frame, giving us top access. 3 days later, Dave says he's very pleased with how it turned out.

Below are pictures of the actual modification