Putting seats back into bongo

[Blue salsa]

I'm not sure if this is the best section to post in but we could do with some advice - we have a bongo with a rear kitchen conversion which has been great but now we are expecting baby number 3 in a couple of months so we thought we would sell the kitchen and reinstall the rear seats so there are enough seats with 3 point seat belts for all the car seats ( lap belt in the middle of the middle bench seat)

However, this seems to becoming extremely complicated! We have been told by various garages that they won't supply seats or seat belts incase they have been in an accident which has made me paranoid about buying off ebay etc. that we would have to replace our nice vinyl floor with carpet or get special deep runners??! And no one seems to really want to do it, we have been quoted £350 if we source the bits which seems crazy.

- Does anyone have any ideas where to get some seats from - I thought this would be easy as so many people take them out but worried about safety now
- is reinstalling seats quite a simple job that we could do ourselves and just pay to have seat belts installed?
- do we need special runners? Middle seat is on short runners, do we need to replace these with long runners or can we fit 2 lots of short runners in?
- can we get any new seat belts installed or do they have to be from a bongo?
- does anyone know if there is a car seat or booster that can be used with a lap belt?

Thanks in advance for any advice

[Simon Jones]

If you have short runners then you would originally have had the split, side folding gull wing type seats at the rear of the van. These bolt to the top of the wheelarch areas so should just fit straight in as long as the mounting points haven't been modified. Whereabouts are you located? I have a spare pair of rear seats and seat belts which you can have quite cheaply. I could give you a hand to swap it all over if you are local.

[Jimboduo]

We've just had seats taken out and the other set reversed. Cost us £45 at a local VW specialists!

We have a spare row of seats now and are looking for a rear kitchen. Want to swap?!!!

[Blue salsa]

Thanks for your help, the bongo is a 1997 and didn't have the folding seats unfortunately as this sounds like a better option, does this mean that we originally had long runners which were swapped with short ones when the kitchen was put in? is it possible to have 2 sets of short runners with 2 bench seats or do we need to make sure we get long runners as well?

[Simon Jones]

It's possible the long tracks were cut down, or replaced with short tracks, but unless you know that for sure, there is a pretty good chance it would have had the fold up seats at the rear.

If it was originally fitted with long tracks then finding another long set will be your best bet. Two short sets won't work unless you don't want the flexibility to slide the seats fully.

[dave_aber]

If your van started off with long rails, and now it's got short rails and a vinyl floor, then you can refit long rails, 2 stes of runners and 2 bench seats, but as the rails bolt to the floor under the timber that the vinyl is glued to, you would have to remove the floor and either modify it and refit on top of the long rails, or refit a standard carpet / foam padding in place of the hard floor.

Not impossible, but it's a lot of work.