Sit and Swivel----

Well following a recent winter trip skiing, whereby we had to live in the motorhome MH for over 2 weeks with no outside space I noticed something. George and Harley are getting bigger, not a lot bigger but deffinately bigger. This means that the normal dinnete space we have is shrinking. I first thought about changing Nessie for a rear lounge model. But with the expense involved and the ammount of hassle I thought about another option. That option was to fit a swivel seat to the drivers side of the van in order to incorparate the drivers seat in ot the van. This I thought could be where I sit and therefore freeing up plenty of room on the diner for the boys and nikki. Nikki normaly crashes out on her bunk anyway and reads a book so that would leave the dinner to just fit in the two boys.

I thought long and hard and researched this idea to see how hard it would be. The replies from searching various forums and speaking to sellers of such swivel seats ranged from "undo a few bolts mate" to " a certain ammount of engineering is required but not beyond the realms of a DIY person". Well I located a swivel base made by FASP. and when it arrived it looked quite straight forward. I had already previously taken the front seat out when I changed the leisure battery so therefore knew that bit would not be to difficult.

Having got the seat out this is where the problems really began. Problem 1 meant that when the swivel was attached to the base the seat would not go back on because the runners would not fit due to the locating lugs being at the front had been raised.

I was prepared for this problem as it had been mentioned before whilst doing a bit of research. I therefore had to saw the lugs off. The seat then bolted through the swivel plate and back on to the frame.

The next problem I encountered was having put the seat back in to the van, teh seat would swivel nicely to face the rear of the van but when back into the driving position the seat was slightly offset. Meaning i would be driving without the seat being straight. I looked and looked for advice on this and even phoned the manufacturers for advice. When the seat was swivelled to the driving position it was catching on part of the swivel. The answer Iwas told was that I would have to modify the seat swivel itself. I therefore had to saw and grind a lug off of the swivel base so it would swivel all the way back round to its driving position and be sraight. The second picture shows the lug that I had to grind off. Once done the seat swivelled around and back in to place and locked firmly.

The other pictures show the seat swivelled and the extra space it created. There was loads more space inside the van. It had proved to be quite an investment. The job took me about a whole day but if I had known from the start what I had to do I could probably have done it in a few hours. Im well impressed by the extra space created and more than happy with the end result. The only problem now is that instead of the boys sitting where they normaly sit, they now both want to argue about who is sitting in the swivel seat!!

CAUTION

Replacing the seat unit with a swivel seat is not something to be done lightly. Where possible you should always seek expert advice. Make sure that you only use high tensile bolts to bolt the seat, because in an accident there will be a lot of stress placed on the bolts. This is a job for a competent DIY person to undertake if you don't feel competent then I would not hesitate to get someone in that is.

Another thing to bear in mind is that there are loads and loads of different variations of seat fittings in the ducato and boxer vans. Therefore it might simply be a case of bolt on bolt off, but the likely hood is that it wont be. The instructions sold with these products are at best inadequate due to the ammount of variations. I found this video very helpful. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ace68J3oknM But even with this video mine was slightly different.

Good luck and if you require any help please email me.

Nikki said let there be light. and there was.

The one thing that we had noticed about Nessie over the years we have owned her was that inside she always seemed a little bit dark. When entering other motorhomes with Heiki roof lights they always looked so light and airey. In nessie she was equipped with two 40x40 roof vents, but the problem was that they were solid white plastic. This meant that they would only let light in to the motorhome when they were fully open. Not much use if it's raining outside. I therefore located a couple of oniminster transparent rooflights of the same size. These were supplied by O'leary motorhomes and cost about £60 each. Now they do come with extractor fans as an extra if you want them, but as the purpose was to put in more light I went for the plain transparent ones.

Picture 1

The first thing was to remove the old roof lights. This was done by obviously dismantling the screws first from the inside of the motorhome. Then I had to scrape away all the old sealent first. To do this I used a paint scraper. I then used a large screw driver to get underneath the sunlight and then slightly leaver it as doing so I started to cut away the old sealent with the paint scraper. A certain bit of caution is required here as you do not want to leaver it of to forcefully, a certain bit of patience is required to it bit by bit.

Picture 2

shows the rooflight taken out. It's a lot more of a messy job than I had imagined so make sure the interior of the MH is nicely covered. With the whole now visable it's important to give the surround of the whole a good clean to ensure a firm fit when putting on the new rooflight. My motto was plenty of sealent and a good spread of sealent was put on. I chose to the easy of the two first incase I had any snags , the second rooflight was located on the actual luton so not as much room to work on. This is where I came accross the first snag. The old roof lights were cut into a rounded corner. The new ones had a square edge all the way round. I there fore had to get my jigsaw out and straighten the edges for the new onminster to fit.

Picture 3

Shows the new roof light fitted on to the top. The inside is quite simple to do and is simply a case of srewing this to that.

Pictures 4 & 5

The finished effect. There is an unbeleivable ammount of light inside the van now. The lights are very sylish in my opinion and with intergrated blinds and fly screens they really look the part. For only £63 per light, I think it has improved Nessie no end. She is so much more light and airey inside and deffinately a modification I would reccomend.

OH DEAR.

well I did say that you need to get a good seal did I not? Well the first light I fixed when I done the water test failed. I let a good ammount of rain get on the roof and I then went for a drive. I must of missed a massive part of sealent because water poured in. I therefore got back on the roof and took the rooflight off and refitted it to make sure it was ok. It now appears to be on good and propper with no leaks. There is not a lot of danger in getting damp in the roof from doing this job because from what I can see if the rooflight was to leak you would know about it pretty quickly.