Front Passenger seat, rear facing (1 Viewer)

[surface]

Hi all,

I've found several threads on people discussing possibilities of doing a rotating front seat, but there is not nearly enough room. The idea here being that a rear facing seat might be more enjoyable for car camping. I have an the electric seat, but would consider sourcing a manual

1. Is it possible to simply flip the seat the other way, using the same tracks? Could you get it down to a 10 minute job?
2. I'm guessing this is likely not a safe configuration for highway travel (convince me otherwise if so) so it would be great if you could flip it relatively quickly once you've reached a destination.

Any thoughts?

 

[BILT4ME]

Hi all,

I've found several threads on people discussing possibilities of doing a rotating front seat, but there is not nearly enough room. The idea here being that a rear facing seat might be more enjoyable for car camping. I have an the electric seat, but would consider sourcing a manual

1. Is it possible to simply flip the seat the other way, using the same tracks? Could you get it down to a 10 minute job?
2. I'm guessing this is likely not a safe configuration for highway travel (convince me otherwise if so) so it would be great if you could flip it relatively quickly once you've reached a destination.

Any thoughts?

The best way is to unbolt it, turn it around and see how close it is. I would guess not very, because the inner side of the seat brackets are much shorter than the outer side of the seat brackets. Plus, the back of the seat will probably hit the windshield or dash.

I would not drive on the hwy with it like that, but it could be done for camping. Maybe build a separate bracket to make it adapt?

I have not seen you on before. You're in the KC area, maybe come hook up with the Tornado Alley Cruisers.

 

[cahill]

I have wondered about this possibility as well but haven't looked into it. As @BILT4ME said, you would have to create some sort of bracket on the floor and change the seat feet so that they could flip around. Maybe you could get away with extra holes in the new floor bracket to accomidate different widths of the front and rear feet when flipping it around?

 

[greentruck]

Assuming the seat is secured as well in the reversed configuration and a seatbelt is available (and no airbag is involved, depending on the year of your 80), it should be safe. On military aircraft that have fixed passenger seating, it is usually in reverse configuration. Our family flew space-A back from Germany one summer on a C-5, which has about 75 passenger seats facing backwards on the second deck. This is safer in crashes, although the two types of crashes aren't directly comparable.