L400 captains chairs swivel and slide

[Green1]

As the general consensus appears to be that I do not know what I'm talking about, and cause more harm than good, I am removing this post so that others are not tricked in to following my ill-advised instructions.

[TardisDeli]

Wow Green1, very nicely written and photographed post on the L400 seats.

Does this modification make the seats better for sleeping on, as the existing layout is lumpy bumpy unless one lays a foam or air mattress over top all the flat seats.

Cheers, Christine.

[Green1]

As the general consensus appears to be that I do not know what I'm talking about, and cause more harm than good, I am removing this post so that others are not tricked in to following my ill-advised instructions.

[mararmeisto]

What do you mean by "seat bottom down"? Not having an L400, nor having sat in the captain's chairs, I'm having a hard time visualising what you mean by that description. Pictures please?

Cool mod - if I had gone from an L300 to an L400, I think I would find the lack of rotation a real issue.

[Green1]

As the general consensus appears to be that I do not know what I'm talking about, and cause more harm than good, I am removing this post so that others are not tricked in to following my ill-advised instructions.

[mararmeisto]

On the L400, when you slide the captain's chairs forward to get them out of the way to haul larger cargo, the seat bottom (the part you sit on) flips up to give even more room.

That definitely sounds handy.

[DeliTan]

Thanx Green1 for getting me off my butt to do these mods. I do have a few comments tho.

Red: pretty easy, a little wiggly to get the stop AND SPRING out

Blue: only necessary to take out either the top 2 or the bottom 2. Far easier once you remove the rail from the seat (see Green). I used a zip cut on a grinder.

Green: I can't figger out how you got this bugger out without removing the rail, I couldn't. Fortunately the rail will slide off easily by removing the plastic end cap and the "stop" bolt

john

IMG_0015.jpg (25.64 KiB) Viewed 16120 times

[Green1]

The blue ones I did without removing the rail, but twisting the seat to about a 45degree makes it easier.
The green one... well I figured it would probably come off without removing the rail, (looks like it should) but I'll admit I slid the rail off to do it.

[chris]

Green1 this is a problem that I never knew I had! I had to go to the garage to see what you are talking about.

So if you slide the front seats all the way forward and push the seatbacks forward, you can snug the second row up against them, facing backwards, and have an extra foot or so of living room space facing the back bench. No need for the front seat spinorama mod with welding etc.

Nice work!

As an added bonus. I found some cheerios.

Chris

[psilosin]

I think Green1 will regret deleting this post once he cools off a bit. Therefore I looted some plutonium from some Libyans, fired up the Delorean to 88mph and enaged the flux capacitor and went back to June 5th and saved the original post:

Originally written by Green1:
The L400 has some annoying features on the factory middle row captain's chairs, their usefulness decreases greatly as they are slid toward the front of the track, in fact in the front foot or 2 of the track you can't rotate the seats, and you must have the seat folded up. Additionally, no matter where you are in the track, although the seats swivel, they can only do 3/4 of the circle, meaning that I constantly find myself turning the seat "the wrong way" and having to turn it all the way the other direction to face where I want it.

Today, as my backpacking trip was snowed out (springtime in Alberta!), I decided to see what I could do about these issues.

Basically it turns out that each of the 4 tracks you see in the floor of the Delica is actually 2 tracks side by side, the right track has the sliders in it and is what you "lock in" to when sliding the seat, the left track is the "safety track" this seems to have only one purpose, to detect how far forward the seat is, and lock out certain features when you are ahead of that point, (the safety track is deep at the back of the vehicle, but shallow at the front in the the section where you can't have the seat bottom down or rotate the seat. (in the picture bellow you can see the transition from deep to shallow right at the bottom of the green circle (the track basically ends there and doesn't really proceed forward from there))

When you unbolt the track from the floor and lay the seat on it's side you will see the offending bits:


First there is the red circle which shows the piece that stops the chair from rotating when in the front part of the track. I can't see any good reason for this, so I removed the one nut that holds it on, and pulled it out, the chair now rotates no matter where in the track you are.

Secondly in the blue circles... well you can't see much in this picture I'm afraid... but there are metal tabs sticking up from the base, and more sticking down from the top, when these tabs hit each other the seat stops turning, this is why you can only rotate the seat through 270 degrees instead of the whole 360 and more. these tabs are welded on to the base and seat. Again I can't see any good reason for this, so I took a pair of vice grips and bent those tabs back and forth until they broke off, problem solved! you can now spin the seat around and around and around without having to stop and go the other direction! (note, these tabs are unrelated to the locking tabs that hold the seat in place facing forward, backward, or sideways, so don't worry about the safety aspect of this one)

Thirdly, in the green circle, is the bit that stops you from having the seat bottom down when in the front part of the track. removing the 2 bolts allowed the latch to fall out, and the seat bottom can be down regardless of where the seat is in the track!

SAFETY NOTE: Mitsubishi obviously did this stuff for a reason... ok, well, I can't come up with any good reason for the first 2, but I suspect there is some form of good reason for the third one... so... don't occupy the captains chairs in the forward part of the track while the vehicle is moving... I think there's some form of nastiness that could potentially happen in a collision, and I'm not responsible if it happens to you!

I should also mention, that the third modification here is the contentious one, with the latch in place, you can't slide the seats forward beyond a certain point while the seat bottom is down, it is conceivable that the latch MAY serve as some form of safety redundancy to stop the seat from sliding too far forward in a collision, personally I think that the odds of the primary latches failing to be extremely low (keep in mind the L300 only has the primary latches, and I was never worried there!) and additionally, if the primary latches did somehow fail, I doubt this latch would have any hope of even slowing down the seat if there was THAT much force involved. That said, it is up to you to decide your own risk tolerance, and to decide for yourself if you think it is worth the risk to disable this safety feature. I can't make that decision for you, and again, I'm not responsible if you suffer any ill effects from this, or any other modification.