I'm still waiting on my fuel lines to be delivered, so I jumped to working on the Antisplat seat back modification. This will be kind of a handful to do because it's not specifically designed for a tip-up canopy, but I think it'll be worth the effort in the end. The biggest headache right out of the gate was due to the fact that I had already drilled holes in all of the original parts, which meant that the new pieces in the modification had to be made to fit the original holes. It's going to be pretty much impossible to explain the modification, but I'll give it a shot.
The original seat back brace comes out and is replaced by an aluminum box that is riveted to the vertical bulkhead pieces and extends back about 4", where the new brace will attach. The biggest problem was trying to get accurate holes drilled in this box, which is sandwiched in between two existing parts that are already drilled. That wouldn't be a big deal if all of the parts were rigid, but there's a lot of wiggle room in the parts still, so it's extremely difficult to put the box in place without impacting the location of the holes in the parts that are on bottom and top of it. It literally took two hours of back and forth clamping and moving and testing to get the left side in a spot where I was confident enough to drill the holes through the top and front of the box.
I put the right side box in place and got most of the holes drilled in it, but the existing holes in the plate that goes on top of the box were just too far off once everything was positioned, so I'm going to remake the plate (ordered a new piece of aluminum) so I can drill fresh holes exactly where they need to go. You can see how the new brace works at least - instead of the seat back only going back as far as the vertical bulkhead piece, with the new brace it can recline a bit further. With the seat adjuster that is hinged to the seat back itself, if it goes in the wedge on top of the brace, the seat sets at the exact same position as the original Van's design.
Because the seat brace sets further back than the stock design, I also have to modify the flap covers. I'm still trying to figure out how the mod works here (no instructions with the mod, just the raw material). There is a new welded aluminum box that extends the original flap cover back to the seat brace, but it's not fitting all that well. I think I need to redo some of my original bends and cuts to make it all fit.
While I was working on the seats, I noticed that the seatbacks don't actually fold all of the way forward at the lower hinge because they hit the attachments of the vertical flap cover. I cut a square chunk out of each of the attach points to allow the seat backs to clear them. This will let me flip the seats forward to slide stuff into the baggage area.
