While searching for our “New to Us” motor home, we noticed a lot of people had removed the “chair” that was located behind the passenger seat and in front of the door. This seemed weird, as we were welcoming this “chair”. Why would someone remove it??After we bought the Mirada and started getting some experience with it. I believe we discovered why some people opted to remove the “chair”. It was somewhat non-functional, it was to close to the passenger seat, and the passenger seat was in the way if I wanted to sit in the “chair”.
I explored several solutions (including removing the chair. but finally decided to move the chair a few inches so that the passenger seat wouldn’t interfere with it.
The first thought was to relocate the entire pedestal (That was preferred) but after investigating how it was bolted down, that would require building a complete mounting structure under the floor to complicated.
I then thought about just making a plate to shift the mounting holes for the seat, and leave the pedestal where it was. YES
I was originally going to do this with 1/4 steel plate, but decided to do it with 3/4 plywood.
1) I removed the seat from the pedestal, 4 each 5/16 nuts.
The bolts on the tracks aren’t long enough to go through 3/4 plywood, so I removed them and will replace them with 1/4 bolts that are 1-1/2 inches long.
To bolts are pressed in, so I put the nut on the bolt and gave them a couple good firm whacks with the hammer to remove them from the tracks.
2) I cut a 13×13 inch plywood. I placed it over the pedestal and marked where I needed to drill holes to mount the plywood to the pedestal.
After marking the holes, I used a straight edge and measured 3 – 1/2 inches from the existing holes, and marked where the new holes needed to be to bolt the seat track to the plywood.
3) After drilling the eight holes, I mounted the plywood to the pedestal. The plywood hit the center of the pedestal so I used about 12 washers to space the plywood UP off of the pedestal. Use 1/4 bolts with lock-washer, spacer washers and tighten them up.
4) I then positioned the chair on the plywood and dropped the 1/4 inch x 1-1/2 inch bolts through the front and back of the rails and through the plywood. everything was tightened and then ready for a test sitting.
The chair has been moved 3 1/2 inches rearward, toward the entry door. There is now plenty of clearance away from the passenger seat and ample room to rotate and sit comfortably in the chair.
IMPORTANT – The char mounting is strong enough for sitting in, but I removed the seat belt assembly, as it would not be strong enough in a crash. We don’t use it for sitting while traveling anyway
Also – Although the chair now projects in front of the entry door a little, this is unnoticeable as this entryway is very wide to start with.
Photo 1 – a 13×13 plywood is mounted to the pedestal. You can see the holes that the chair rails will be mounted to. These are about 3-1/2 to the side of the original pedestal holes.
Photo 2 – Looking up at the bottom of the plywood plate with the seat mounted. Notice a bunch of washers used to space the plywood above the pedestal. You need this for clearance of the pivot bolt in the pedestal and also to install the nuts on the bolts of the chair rails.
Photo 3 – Char mounted and plenty of space between the passenger seat and the chair.