23 Jan 08. Finishing the Cabin – Seats & Sleeper!
My goal from the start of this project was to have a couple seats in the cabin and easily move them out to make room for sleeper for those moto trips. With the help of a friend, we came up with a solution that not only has been super strong, but very flexible.
The Seats
First, I found front seats from a salvage yard that were in great shape and have seat belts built-in. They were out of a newer Ford F150 truck.
Next, we used Unistrut to make a flexible mount for the seats to the vehicle. All our bolts and washers are Grade 8. After figuring out where the seats be easily mounted through the floor, we drilled our holes and used flat steel to give support to the under carriage.
Unistrut bolted to the floor..
The flat steel used underneath the seat..
The mounting hardware for the seats to the Unistrut..
This arrangement will allow me to attach the mounts to the Unitstut and once aligned for a seat, never remove them. Here you can see the holes with no bolts is where the seats will attached. The bolts you see will never be removed from the Unistrut, this ensures my seats can quickly and easily be installed and I don’t have to worry about lining things up. It’s worked great over the past year!
Here’s one seat bolted down and ready to go..
Now I can easily remove the 4 bolts for the seats, lift the seats out and make room for the sleeper.
The Sleeper
The sleeper must mount to these existing floor Unistruts, and be sturdy, as well as comfy! Well, I had an old Ping Pong table I needed to get rid of, so I used the wood from it for the sleeper platform.
To add additional support I mounted small rails for the platform to rest on. In the photo below, you can see the black metal I used for these supports. These really helped in stabilizing it as well as making it easier to install the sleeper.
As for the height, I wanted the bed to be high enough I could fit storage bins under neath it, yet not to tall my head would hit the ceiling. Using Unistrut and these brackets(below) for the platform support legs, this make the platform very sturdy…
Here you can see the sleeper platform installed as well as the support legs mounted to the floor Unistrut…
I bought some memory foam for the mattress and boy is it comfy! Here’s the bed complete..
In the next post… curtains and screens go in!
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