Swivel seat plate

See my NON VW SEATS thread in General Technical.

Has all the info you need.

Here's the link

NON VW SEATS

Thats what I meant to do.

Thanks Kiteman

Just fitted this swivel seat plate this morning, all in it just took 75mins, I only had to make a couple of slight adjustments with the drill and hacksaw. Once on it makes a great difference to the living area. Worth the £165 I spent with JK.

great work olive. I agree well worth the money and makes it more roomy inside at the back.

Great job - very cool & practical

peppa wrote:

Nice work Dave,very smart...How do you get on with the seat belt fixing...? Do you have to loosen it to swivel the seat...?

Paul

All I did was hacksaw off 15mm of the chrome U shaped piece which holds the belt buckle holder in place. Then when I need to swivel the seat I unhook it from the holder and push it down to allow the chair to swivel around it. It doesnt interfere with the belt on the door pillar at all.

FYI - If your tall dont forget swivel base plates will add height to the seat....

i heard that before but there doesnt appear to be much of a ride height change from the pictures. Whats your view Olive?

I ditched my plan to fit a swivel base for this very reason Tilly - looked like a hassle tbh.

So in summary, it's a great addition to a left hooker, but, unless you are vertically challenged - in which case it may be a bonus, it's not so cool for a rhd.

Baydreamer wrote:

i heard that before but there doesnt appear to be much of a ride height change from the pictures. Whats your view Olive?

30mm higher, you dont notice it, I am 5' 11'' and have plenty of room above. and thats even with an additional 10mm of seat foam in the new Newton Commercial covers.

Tilly wrote:

I think this shows that a swivel seat is more useful/practical on a LHD.

Tilly is a RHD and had a swivel seat on the driver's side but I had to take it out because a) it was too high for me (I'm 5'9 but was looking out of the front window above the wiper line - would be ok for a passenger though), and b) because the steering wheel makes it a real pain to swivel, requiring lots of forward/back and backrest adjustments to swivel round and then ending up very upright.

I rather wish Danbury had pointed this out to me before I shelled out £lots for it - I can't believe they didn't know, but they were happy enough to take my money.

£299 from Danbury

mhami wrote:

I was quoted £500 by Danbury (!) so went for this one from JK for £165. I presume its the same one as Daves?

http://www.justkampers.com/shop/seat-swivel-plate-j18046.html

After 10 minutes of head scratching I devised a way of fitting it with just the screws and bolts supplied and no drill etc. It doesn't quite swivel the full 180 degrees, more like 170, but its still very useful! My camper is a RHD and its still pretty quick to swivel with not much faffing.

I agree that the height gain isn't much and it wouldn't normally be a problem if I didn't have an external sun visor fitted!!! I love the way the visor looksl but it may unfortunately have to go as i now have no idea when traffic lights turn green until the person behind starts beeping! (I'm also sure it does nothing for my fuel ecomony and starts to wobble alarmingly above 60mph). Oh well!

Dave, how many holes did you need to drill and where?

Matt

I only had to drill the existing holes at the rear of the runners slightly larger to take the thickness of the bolts provided, I followed Skytigers method. All in there are the two main bolts at the rear and one small one at the front on both runners. I also hacksawed off a small piece of the corner of the plate to enable the chair to fully swivel 180 degrees. Easy job to do and I am not very good with this type of work.
£500 from Danbury is a joke

Hi Matt. We charge £249 (+ vat) including labour / fitting for the proper swivel plate...Not cutting etc required. Not £499......

jj123vw wrote:

Hi Matt. We charge £249 (+ vat) including labour / fitting for the proper swivel plate...Not cutting etc required. Not £499......

If you are suggesting that JK are not supplying a'proper plate' I think you will find the plate supplied by JK is a 'proper plate' there is only a slight modification to be made due to the angled bulkhead on the BraziBay which they inform you before you purchase from them. By the looks of it its unlike the one you supply as there is minimal height increase which enables you to still safely see out the windscreen unlike Tilly's bus which you fitted and didnt inform. And yours is nearly double the cost of the JK plate. It took me just over an hour taking my time and I am not a skilled engineer. £299 against £165

The price saving must be due to the fact then that you have to modify the plate to make it fit - as its not specially made for the Brazilian model . They probably also make greater numbers and get the cost down as its for the older model.....simples

jj123vw wrote:

The price saving must be due to the fact then that you have to modify the plate to make it fit - as its not specially made for the Brazilian model . They probably also make greater numbers and get the cost down as its for the older model.....simples

Its a universal component produced for a number of VW's, like all motor manufacturing they have universal components to suit various combinations. The price saving is 'simples' your mark up is too high.

Without seeing both swivel plates side by side it's impossible, and somewhat pointless to debate this.

I'm going to the Just Kampers' Open Day this Saturday - I'll have a look at one of theirs and photograph it. Jason feel free to send me photos of the swivel plate you supply.

mhami wrote:

Hi dave

If you get a chance could you please post some more photos showing exactly how you lined up the plate with which holes and how much you had to cut off the corner? No worries if you're too busy!

Many thanks

Matt

Ita all in here thanks to Skytiger

https://brazilianvwbay.forumotion.com/t495-non-vw-seats

If this link doesnt work search non vw seats and it will come up.

Cheers

Ok ta.

I'm 6'3" and I do find myself looking above the wiper line, though it's not generally a problem, even when it's raining. Has anyone converted their Brazilian Bay so that the wipers sweep the other way?

Swivelling the seat is a bit of a faff until you've learned the technique of moving it forward and backward to clear the steering wheel.

The only issue I have with the swivel seat is that the chrome loop which holds the seat belt anchor to the driver's left hand side has to have a section chopped out of it so that the seat belt anchor can be dropped out of the way to allow swivelling. The remaining c-shaped section of chrome has been easily bent out of position, but I'm reluctant to bend it back for fear of weakening the metal.

CHRIS

Blue Seagull wrote:

I'm 6'3" and I do find myself looking above the wiper line, though it's not generally a problem, even when it's raining. Has anyone converted their Brazilian Bay so that the wipers sweep the other way?

Swivelling the seat is a bit of a faff until you've learned the technique of moving it forward and backward to clear the steering wheel.

The only issue I have with the swivel seat is that the chrome loop which holds the seat belt anchor to the driver's left hand side has to have a section chopped out of it so that the seat belt anchor can be dropped out of the way to allow swivelling. The remaining c-shaped section of chrome has been easily bent out of position, but I'm reluctant to bend it back for fear of weakening the metal.

CHRIS

The c shaped piece of chrome is only there to hold the seat belt piece in place, you dont need it there as it serves no other purpose, the T2's made earlier didnt have this on thier seat its only part of the Golf seat.

On the passenger side(RHD Bus, so no wheel) I used the back hole it pushes the swivel base forward, but you need to drill a new hole in the swivel base for the front bolts to fit. This way you do not need to cut off the back and front left corner for bulkhead clearance in order to swivel. You still need to enlarge the hole in the original seat runner for the back bolts to fit(which are too long and require 16mm length bolts). See pic below



However I haven't tried this method with my drivers seat and don't know if this would make swiveling worse or better, with my mx5 seat on now it swivels fine so do not know if this would be a better option with standard seats.

I have seen a danbury fitted swivel seat and this particular one didn't use the original runners to mount it, it just had spacers and was bolted through the seat pan.

This is a pic of my original seat fitted to the swivel base from JK, not much height difference.