Front seats, is there an easy way to convert to 3 seat bench

Hello all,

I have picked up a converted super custom a few months ago for parents to do travel in.
It's got a DIY camper interior in the back, leisure battery etc:

One issue I had not realized is that it only has the two front seats now.
In the past I had a hiace where the front seat had two main seats and a smaller one in the middle...not the comfiest but you could get three people in just about.

On the supercustom this space is instead taken up by the fridge/arm-rest.
Is there an easy/legal way to swap that out for a 3rd seat like in the hiace?

Many thanks,

I have the Hiace, officially not the Super Custom, but is the same model.
I have it with three seperate seats in the front. Because of that, I have a pull up handbrake under the dashboard, unlike the regular hand brake that you will have. No console in the middle.

However, it's not perfect. We use it as a camper for travelling. And the middle chair for an adult is annoying on long ends, because your legs have to go next to the gear lever.
For small children which have to be in child seats, they come a bit more forward because of the child seat, and so can touch the gear lever (with their feet)
If you have older children (but not too big) it would be okay I think.

It's kind of nice if you only have one child, to all sit in front, but it is not ideal. And if you are with four or more, you're gonna have a rear bench anyway. Now that we are with four, we won't be using the front middle seat much.

You can get rock-n-roll beds for vans with seatbelts fitted - CE certified IIRC.
So that may be another option - depending upon layout.

See if your seat is already OK to fit belts to - it's quite a popular thing these days.

Thanks for the replies so far.

The main thing we want is to get a 3rd adult in the van legally/safely.
This is what I have to work with:



Clearance:
85cm cupboard to start of step.
75cm front bulkhead to bed.

Can anyone suggest a seat that would fit here?
Needs to have a seat belt and be easily removable when camping etc?

Also could anyone please take a photo of the floor runners for the standard seats in this area?
I bought the van as-is, but hoping those original runners may be under the carpet.

Looks a nice van, although like many layouts the best view out of the sliding door is given to the dresser/sink. Quite often it's a fridge that gets treated to that view.

In the Hiace I have there are 3 rear seats, one large rear bench seat that slides along the van, a mid two seater swivel that is on a fixed base (and I spent a while - documented on this site - getting it to rotate 360 degrees, and a mid single seater swivel on a fixed base.

IMO you have some choices

1) Go back to the Toyota SC layout with 3 seats that fold to a camper, or some partial combination.
2) Get a Rock-n-roll bed with seatbelts to replace that one.

I'm going for 1), because I want to use the 2 seater swivel to look out of the sliding door with, I'll keep the sliding bench seat and the two fold to form a fat L shaped bed (due to the deletion of the single swivel which just gets in the way.

So I'll have 5 legal seats in the back, and use a moveable/foldable pod to make the bed bigger when required. The cupboard you have there will instead be a pod behind the front seats


Most vans of your layout have 1) for passengers.
Your original sliders + mounting points will be there but may be under a plywood floor..

Give these guys a call. I met with them on the weekend. They do camping conversions so may already have something they do for others..

http://www.jcsswltd.co.uk/

If you do, let them know you got their number from here.. Im hoping they will give some sort of discount if you use them.