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View Full Version : Daytona seats in a Caravan?



Lee'sdaytona
04-23-2006, 10:42 AM
Hey I may be getting into the turbo mini market, and I'm swapping all my good parts from my daytona to the new van (if I get one) but It would kill me to part with my almost perfect condition red leather seats from the daytona. How hard would it be to put the front two seats in the van and make them fully function? I think I've seen this done once before....
thanks,
Lee

turbovanmanČ
04-23-2006, 02:01 PM
The fully functional part is simple if you know wiring, I believe you just need to run some powers and grounds. Now making them fit will take some time, I have some very nice Shadow ES seats I want to install but the base plates look different and the fact that our seats sit atop 4-5 inch spacers. Your just going to have to play around with some metal and a welder. Luckily, the seats come out of the van in 2 minutes, :amen: I could be wrong about the seat tracks but I doesn't look that bad to make fit.

Lee'sdaytona
04-23-2006, 04:16 PM
Yeah I was thinking the same....do you think it would look dumb, as these seats are supposed to be mounted low to the floor?
-Lee

Whorse
04-24-2006, 12:37 AM
Depends how tall you are as well.

turbovanmanČ
04-24-2006, 01:15 AM
Yeah I was thinking the same....do you think it would look dumb, as these seats are supposed to be mounted low to the floor?
-Lee


You still use the spacers, :p

Lee'sdaytona
04-24-2006, 12:05 PM
You still use the spacers, :p
I know you still use the spacers, but I'm not sure how it would look when they normally are supposed to sit low....I know there is a dodge mini ram van on there where the guy put daytona seats in it...maybe I'll ask him....oh yeah, I'm 5'7'', so yeah I'm pretty short
-Lee

Lee'sdaytona
04-24-2006, 03:37 PM
I found that cardomain profile after about an hour :) http://www.cardomain.com/ride/286076

Its an 86 RAM VAN (mini ram van)
-Lee

ShelbyZD
05-02-2006, 11:56 AM
Wow! That guy must be mostly deaf by now.. lol

Lee'sdaytona
05-02-2006, 08:44 PM
Wow! That guy must be mostly deaf by now.. lol
haha yeah I definately wouldn't want that setup....other than to sell it to make some $$ to beef up the drivetrain of a turbomini!
-Lee

Lee'sdaytona
08-19-2006, 05:27 PM
ok I'm still interested in doing this. When I get back to school, I'll have access to a metal shop where I can weld up stuff.
One setback I though about: The daytona had the center console with the armrest. The caravan seats have their own armrests. I was thinking maybe I could take the arm rests off the caravan seats, and weld up some sort of pipe that could go down to the spacers, and then wrap the bracket in matching carpet? Would that look dumb?
-Lee

Dodge Aries K
08-20-2006, 02:42 AM
As I've tried this before with AA body seats in a minivan, they do NOT fit right on the tracks. We ghettofabbed some brackets to see how they would work and while comfy... I jumped in the van and plopped down on the passenger seat and it kinda just BROKE off the car... So we got some LE seats for the from from a 88 Grand Voyager. However after more investigation I found that K and E body seats will bolt up to the minivan track for one..... and then also work right on the floor riser! So if you can find a nice E body split bench and use the two halves on your van you'll also have an armrest then. Or K car buckets wouldn't be so bad either. They're comfortable and on the 85-89 style cars (rounded lights) they would hold you in place pretty well for the kind of cornering a minivan is capable of. :)

Clay
08-20-2006, 08:17 AM
the daytona is based on the K-car, so would those seats then just bolt up to the minivan riser?

sound like to me you need to remove the seat from the daytona, and remove the seat from teh minivan, and compare them on a bench somewhere to see what needs to be done to make them fit.

clay

Lee'sdaytona
08-20-2006, 11:51 AM
yeah well like I said, I know its been done. Look at the link I posted...that guy made daytona seats fit in a minivan. The main problem is of course, welding brackets that will safely modify the spacer so the seat will bolt up and STAY ON! I had planned on grabbing a spacer from a junkyard and use that to play around with the welder to fab something up. If I can't make my daytona seats work I'll just keep the stock ones. the thing is, I have really nice enthusiast burgendy leather seats and they are soooo comfortable :)
-Lee

DeckSetter
08-20-2006, 02:02 PM
as far as the arm rests are concerned, you probably won't want them anyway if you're converting the van to a stick anyway. I'm going through the stick swap right now, and I'm afraid the arm rest will be in the way while I'm shifting. My parts van has the driver's arm rest removed.

Lee'sdaytona
08-20-2006, 04:11 PM
as far as the arm rests are concerned, you probably won't want them anyway if you're converting the van to a stick anyway. I'm going through the stick swap right now, and I'm afraid the arm rest will be in the way while I'm shifting. My parts van has the driver's arm rest removed.
Thats a good point. I did notice that when the armrest is UP, it gets in the way of my (pretend) shifting. But if it is down, my elbow slides over top of the armrest. I just want to avoid resting my hand on the shifter because I know thats bad. Plus I'll be using my van for long trips...so I don't know. It appears on the daytona seats there is a pivot bolt exposed that I could rig up something for the armrest fairly easily.
I was also looking at my seats, and I think maybe if I remove the track from the daytona seats, I could bolt the daytona seats to the minivan tracks. THis means, for the driver's power seat, it would now be manual, but I could still hook up the little air compressor and motor for the seat wings, lumbar and thigh. For the passengers seat, the caravan doesn't have a track. It just bolts right to the spacer, and hopefully if once I take the daytona track off the seat, it will bolt right up to the spacer and not interfere with the glove box drawer. :eyebrows:
-Lee

Lee'sdaytona
10-22-2006, 09:38 PM
Ok just a quick update. I attempted to swap seats today. Put the minivan track on the daytona seats successfully! Problem is that the actual seat is one inch narrower than the minivan seat. So that means I can use one side of the original holes in the seat spacer, and the other side I'll have to weld a piece of steel onto and re-drill holes. Worry not, I have a few buddies at school that are great welders, and can help me get a good SAFE weld. But for the breif time I sat in the seats, it brought me back to the daytona days, and they are much more comfortable than the minivan seats!
-Lee

turbovanmanČ
10-22-2006, 10:15 PM
Ok just a quick update. I attempted to swap seats today. Put the minivan track on the daytona seats successfully! Problem is that the actual seat is one inch narrower than the minivan seat.
-Lee

Ok, so the seat track or seat is one inch narrower?

Lee'sdaytona
10-22-2006, 10:29 PM
The actual seat is one inch narrower. Because of that, it makes the track one inch narrower. The track is two pieces, connected by just a picture wire that move with the lever to adjust the track. Hope that makes sence...when you remove the daytona track, it is one big mess of stuff...the power motor and everything. the minivan track (se version) is just two sliding parts, seperate from eachother on the left and right.
-Lee

Dodge Aries K
10-23-2006, 05:50 AM
Same thing with the AA body seats that we put in. Make sure you do something safe to get that to stay.