hoping maybe somebody has tried the half seat way up front deal and whether the left side locked into the existing rail and how they had the right side attached to the floor by fabricated bolt on floor bracket, welding, etc.. Thanks..

 

Greetings,

New guy here. I'm curious if there are any plugs (coverings) for the mechanism in the floor when the seats are removed, something just to fill and cover the void? Also, any suggestion what and where to find some sort of vinyl flooring to go right over the carpet of a passenger van floor. This would be most of the rear of the van. The front will be for seating of family. Back, that I'd like to cover would be for dogs, hauling gear, camping, canoeing, kayaking junk. Just trying to persevere the carpet.

Thanks.

 

Just get a big rubber mat somewhere and cut to fit.

 

My '15, 12-passenger 3500 doesn't have the rails for the 4 person seat extending far enough forward. I don't know why I didn't check sooner because they are easy to feel under the carpet. The 4 person, 4th row rails go forward about 2ft past the seat but stop for some reason half way under the 3rd row seat. I'm not sure it will be worth the hassle for me to buy longer rails and install them. I've heard the rails are hard to remove but I'll take a look someday.

 

I'm basically looking to do the same thing, did you find out anything?

General questions for the group:
When I was a kid my dad had a '77 Chevy 3/4 ton "Sport Van". It was an eight passenger (I think they all were back then) with the front two then two bench rows of three each. The benches were interchangeable but the mounting brackets were recessed into the floor. It would have been VERY difficult to add additional mounting locations as it would have required cutting the floor. From what I have seen in this thread it looks like the modern seats mount to "rails" that appear to be mounted on top of the floor. Is that correct?

I've seen the discussion here and elsewhere about the lack of four rails forward of the last two rows. How difficult would it be to add them? To clarify, I have a welder and I'm mechanical enough to be comfortable drilling and bolting or welding them in but is that possible?

I have two kids (2-1/2 and 17 months) and a third on the way with the possibility of a fourth after that. What I'd like to do initially is exactly what @Merida Tomczak mentioned: Put the 1/2 bench immediately behind the driver's seat. Then I'd have a seven passenger vehicle with a large open area to step into at the side door to tighten down kids in seats and about a mile of cargo space behind the seven passengers.

In theory I'd like to find an extra 4-wide bench or at least the driver's side of one so that I could do this seating by row:

1. Driver and front passenger
2. 1/2 bench behind driver, open space on passenger's side
3. 4-across bench

That way I'd have an eight passenger vehicle with LOTS of cargo space.

In theory I'd really like to have as much flexibility as possible such that I might put a 4-across bench in row two giving me a six passenger vehicle with TONS of cargo space or whatever.

Along these lines, can someone please tell me how many rows of seats fit in front of a 4x8 sheet of plywood?

Thank you in advance.

 

There are some YouTube videos out there of people removing them. Not all of the bolts are easy to get to. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SyuSntLSGwI

 

https://www.gmpartsprime.com/auto-pa..._hardware.html

https://www.gmpartsgiant.com/parts/g...-20870173.html

https://www.wholesalegmpartsonline.c.../20870173.html

 

Thank you @Triaged for the response and links. I watched the video but he is REMOVING the rails, I want to ADD rails. Does anyone know if this is feasible and if everything lines up right once you do it?

 

Is this (#49) not the exact comment as an earlier one (#14) by @x3inchesx ?

 

Bumping this back to the front page because I'm still hoping that someone knows the answer to this . . .