Sunday, July 22, 2018

Our heads are spinning

They're spinning, not just because of the latest White House activities, but because our butts can now spin, and one ideally wants to maintain a good connection between the two.
We installed a Scopema passenger swivel seat.

It's a pretty straightforward job.

First, I'd suggest raising the seat to it's maximum height, and all the way back. Makes reaching under it a bit easier when it comes time to put it all back together.
Unbolt the seat from the base. It's attached to the base with 4 8mm bolts.

Unplug the seat. If it's a power seat like ours, the connector has a hex bolt that attaches the cable to the seat. It can lay on it's back.

Remove the bottle jack. It won't be accessible with the swivel installed.

Find a handy place for the bottle jack, after verifying that it really works. I've read some folks complaining that their jack was defective.
This will leave a breadbox sized storage area in the seat base, for things containing bread-like substances, like that box of 25 year old Hostess Ding Dongs you've been hanging on to.

Install the swivel, using the countersunk flatheads provided by Scopema.
Before bolting down the swivel and re-connecting the seat plug, you may wish to remove one of the strain relief zip-ties holding the cable to the base.
We found that there wasn't enough slack to allow the seat to move fully forward and back, after the cable was fed through the swivel's center hole. Now there's enough slack.
Mount the seat on the swivel. Scopema provides 4 hex bolts, washers and nylocks.We found that rotating the swivel a bit let our fingers reach the mounting holes. It takes a bit of fiddling to get all 4 bolts properly lined up.
Plug in the seat, and screw it down.

Next, you will need to cut off the child seat tie down loop. It interferes with full seat rotation. Hacksaw works fine.
Actually, it may be possible to simply bend the loop down, but I didn't think of doing that until I cut the loop off. So you will have to needlessly mutilate your project as well.

Finally (at least if you have a power seat), you will need to trim some of the plastic from the side panel holing the seat adjusts. The base has some guide pins that aligned the seat forward. They won't clear the plastic side panel when the seat is being rotated.
WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT LET THE AESTHETICS COMMITTEE SEE THE FOLLOWING  PICTURE.


We find that in order to clear those pins, the seat needs to be raised as high as it goes. We also find that moving it as far forward as it can go without hitting the center console sets up less interference between the pins and the plastic.

That's pretty much it, except taking it out for a spin.

 Now, since you have nothing better to do, you have all your tools out, and your head is still spinning, cut out the cable cover above the bed.
It may mean war to trade a peaceful conduit in order to Putin the upper storage over the bed on drivers side but that's the way things go in today's world...
At least that's what I did. I won't demand that you do the same, but anybody who's everybody says it's the biggliest, bestestest, thing a very stable jenius can do.


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