We ordered the factory cloth seats in our van because we knew we would take them out and replace them once we had the van. We opted for the Scheel-mann Vario F seats and the Scopema Swivel bases so we can ride in style and maximize our seating by turning seats around for our "down time". This was not an insignificant upgrade in terms of cost (i.e., the seats and swivels are expensive, so these were definitely a luxury upgrade), but we really like the new seats, and the swivel option was key! By the way, if anyone needs two Ford Transit factory cloth seats, let me know as we now have two sitting in our garage collecting dust!
Ryan, once again, did an amazing job of wiring and installing the swivels and seats. This was not an easy task, but one that he did beautifully and in full detail as seen in our YouTube video below.
KEY LEARNINGS
For the driver side seat, there is not a lot of space with the dual AGM batteries (batteries sit below the seat in the base). We modified both the battery box, cover and the metal h-bracket to allow the wiring to pass through the center of the swivel and for the cover and bracket to not interfere with the swivel.
We also had to be careful with how we ran the seatbelt wiring so that we didn't pull it apart or cut it when swiveling the seats.
We reused part of the metal h-bracket that came with the van originally to still hide the wiring bundle under the new seat once installed (with some modification by Ryan). We ran 2 awg wire from CCP2 to the rear of the van for the 3 Orion Tr-Smart non-isolated B2B chargers. We originally thought we would be able to run this through the pillar behind the driver's seat, but we didn't have enough room and so Ryan decided to run the 2 awg wire through the floor instead of the pillar. Why is this important? This wiring will allow us to recharge our Li ion battery bank from the car alternator when driving (battery bank sits in the garage that will be under our bed).
No real issues on the passenger side. Was a lot easier after getting the driver seat installed (learning curve).
Don't throw away the resistors (they mean business with that sticker!) - this is required to not have the air bag signal on. Ryan had to do some soldering to make this work. Again, one of his many talents!
These seats are also heated from the auxiliheater connection under the passenger seat. Ryan ran both positives in parallel and used a spade connector to plug into the aux heater connection (didn't require cutting any factory wiring).
Finally, directions directly from Scheel-mann, the seat manufacturer, were not so good. These seats are made and shipped from Germany. There are lots of videos that show how to install the swivels, but not so much about the Scheel-mann seats themselves. Toby at Scheel-mann USA, however, was great with helpful insights for installing these in our Transit. Sometimes it pays to just pick up the phone and call someone!
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