I've just bought a pair of genuine vw swivel seat bases and wondered what the process is for welding/fitting these in and if there is a guide on the matter - i know it's something i should have probably looked into first, but i like a challenge so hopefully you chaps/chapettes on here can advise as to the best way to fit them! I've attached a couple of pictures of below.
If they look a bit weird it's because they were an apparant special order for 2 extra middle captain seats with high bases for a twin slider caravelle and they need a light grinding to remove the smaller bases attached!
hope you can weld? Looking at those there not as wide on the bottom half and they should be! The original runners are spot/plug welded in and need drilling out to remove onece there off offer up your new ones and see what needs to be made to make them fit!
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Cheers for the reply James, i was wondering whether they could just be bolted onto the original runners, but i've got a couple of mates who can weld so i'm not to worried if that is what is required. When you say they are not as wide on the bottom half, do you mean the plate above the lever? Unfortunately, the pictures are not the greatest.
Cheers James, yeah, i've just had a look at a pic (shown below) of another one and it would seem that bottom plate is slightly longer - hopefully this will not have too much of an affect to the workings, however, i'm going to attach my seat to it this evening just to make sure everything is hunky dory.
I have a swivel on the passenger side and the original seat runners are still there. The bottom plate is welded between the runners and the swivel part bolts to this.
I hope you have all 8 plastic guides that are inside the swivel base too (251881319 and 251881320), especially the 4 angled lower ones, as they are obsolete and the seat wobbles like buggery without them
I'm presuming that if the base plate on the swivel is not wide enough to weld between the existing runners, other than purchasing a new base plate, the only other way would be to either fabricate something or remove the existing runners and then weld the swivel base in from it's runners as James stated in his reply.
Looks like it certainly is going to be another challenge, but it wouldn't be a T25 if it wasn't!
OK, i've found out why the lower base looks shorter than the normal genuine base, the corners have been cut (you can just see this in the second & third picture). I didn't actually notice this when i went to pick them up yesterday, however, this does mean that i should be able to weld the lower base in whilst keeping the original runners although i may need to get something fabricated for extra strength after the welding has been done if need be.
i just bolted mine into the original seat runners , so no drilling through cab floor or removing original seat runners and damaging van floor so no welding needed and if you ever sell van it can easily be returned to standard in just a few minutes
