Epic Forum
Epic Boards => Epic Forum => Topic started by: arrowheadsaver on April 12, 2008, 03:27:58 am
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Ok, this will be short and brief, but fairly simple. I was done with this project in about 4 1/2 hours. Hope you will appreciate. first take off your seat. (I have a direct drive. V drives may be different???)The seat was somewhat hard to pull off, but it is just the 4 bolts. Remove them and pull, pry, cuss, then it will come loose. This is what it looks like. Measure the space between the bolts for the drilling process. I got 11 5/8+ for length, and 8 3/8+ for width. (+ means inbetween the next 16th if that makes sense.) Yours may be different... Remove the 4 bolts from the sliders and SAVE them for another step.
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Great idea.
Has anyone replaced their seat with a flip up seat? I'm sick of driving up on a knee.
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Next go buy some steel. The plate I used is 10 guage and it is 11x14. I was going to go with the thinner stuff, but I did not want it to bend when I get my "bigger wake people" driving.
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Next drill the holes for the 4 slider bolts. You need a spacer on these bolts to raise the plate above the slider locking thingy. I used a nut on all 4 bolts to raise the plate. See cool pic below. The bolts need to be just long enough to go through the slider, and the 10 guage plate with a teflon lock nut.
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This is the type of swivel I bought. $5 at Sportsmans Warehouse. Yours may be a different style if you wish
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Im at work, I will get back in a bit
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Next drill holes for the swivel base. ***note***These holes need to be off center about 1 inch to make the seat swivel and clear the arm rest and kill switch. See picture. These holes will probably be smaller then the outer slider/seat holes depending on your swivel.
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I forgot to tell you to drill the outside holes a hair smaller then the square part on the head of the seat bolts so you can tighten them down without using pliers to hold the head while tightening the nut...... :-\ When you are all done drilling, paint the plates to prevent rust, (or buy stainles steel) When the paint dries, take the bolts from the sliders and attach them to the outside holes on the top seat plate.
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Next assemble the two plates together with the swivel. Bottom plate with swivel 1/2 inch off center, top plate 1 inch off center. This will make it easier to bolt onto the sliders. When assembled, put 4 smaller bolts into sliders and screw on nut as this will raise the plate above seat adjuster thingy. You are now ready to put on the assembled plates. If you drilled the holes right, it should go on good. Notice picture.
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Ok, I just noticed that the swivel needs to be off center to the right, not left, as this will move seat to the left.
Next drill holes for the swivel base. ***note***These holes need to be off center about 1 inch to make the seat swivel and clear the arm rest and kill switch. See picture. These holes will probably be smaller then the outer slider/seat holes depending on your swivel.
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The seat bolts are also different lengths. The longer ones go toward the steering wheel, shorter ones to the back of boat. Next install seat. It is a bigger pain to get the seat on than it was to take it off. In my case anyway. Well, now that I confused everyone with this project, it is complete. I love the swivel seat. ;D If you have any questions, just e-mail me, or call me @ 801-528-2278.
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The hole for the long seat bolts is drilled at 3/8ths. This will allow the bolt to sinch up without the use of pliers.
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That's a great set-up. I now have a new number 2 on my list of projects (behind the ballast project).
Lesman - Can you cut and paste this to a single document and add it to the Maintenence page? I can make a Power Point presentation if it would help.
Thanks again for posting this project, it will definitely help a lot of folks.
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Does your seat lock in different positions? I think I need more pictures from some different angles. That is a sweet mod. I wonder if it could be done with a swivel that also goes up/down for height adjustment. I agree with Ktown, a single download with very detailed instructions and pictures would be a HUGE benefit for me to try this. Thanks.
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I'll link to this post from the maintenance page. I'll put it in a doc as well soon.
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That's a killer mod, definitely going to do it on my boat:)) Thanks for all the pics and detail Arrowhead!!
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Nice job. Glad someone figured out all that offsetting stuff. I would have just slapped it together and then bitched for hours as I redid it all.
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Yes you can use the lock in swivel. I chose this one. They are the same size, only difference is price and the other locks.
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Awesome! Definitely doing this mod this summer! Ill will use a locking swivel though, it would drive me nuts to have the seat flop around while driving...
Guess I need to get some $$ from the 'rents for Epic mod money. They will probably be happy Im not modding my TrailBlazer for once hahaha! ::)
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This is a great and simple mod to do (I finished mine last week). But i forgot to take the angle of the slider base into account, and the seat leans to the left at the same angle as the base when swiveled toward the passenger (roughly 25 degrees). Most factory installed swivel seats do not spin on a tilted axis like this, and i wish i would have taken the time to correct for this before welding it all together. Maybe i should use good old nuts and bolts next time. And by the way i have a 2002 SX and the seat was very easy to dismantle and re-install.
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Hey guys. I did a similar mod on mine, but now with a swivel. I added a flip-up bolster seat, but don't like how the seat rides nose high and pushes the flip up bolster all the way back against the seat. Has anyone installed a low-rise pedestal? I'm thinking of trying a 6" pedestal in place of the OEM seat braecket assembly. Any input is welcome here before I buy the materials and force myself to do lots of fabrication.
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http://www.epicmarine.com/forum4/index.php?topic=1857.msg15464#msg15464
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finally did this mod last week. not bad, a little disappointed it does not swivel unless moved all the way forward. i did use a garelick 7 degree tilt swivel, mounted upside down to make up for the seat base angle. just shy of being level. having a level seat made a huge difference in driving and seat comfort. not to mention i don't have to use a booster cushion or drive on one knee anymore. the back of the seat was raised almost four inches. this may be why it doesn't swivel all the way. not real sure. curious if anybody else has this problem after adding the swivel?
just some advice- buy the locking swivel. its kind of annoying having it move around while driving. My girls biggest complaint. biggest compliment was having a level seat she could see a lot better while driving.
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Hi Wakejunky, if you are still out in the ether. Finally getting around to this mod, curious which model garelick tilt swivel slide mount you used. I can find one that says it has a tilt feature but pics aren't good and description is worse. 7 deg doesn't seem enough to level out the seat. its 224$ so want to be sure before I order. Thanks in advance if you see this, hope all is great in your world
https://www.westmarine.com/buy/garelick--low-profile-seat-slide-and-locking-swivel--3683398?recordNum=13 (https://www.westmarine.com/buy/garelick--low-profile-seat-slide-and-locking-swivel--3683398?recordNum=13)
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OK found it for 75$ cheaper from this place, pulled the trigger on it. I don't get how an offcenter mount of the swivel moves the seat away from the kill switch and shifter but I can see how moving it back would do it. Anyway, I will experiment and figure it out, and take pics!
https://www.iboats.com/shop/garelick-low-profile-seat-slide-and-locking-swivel.html (https://www.iboats.com/shop/garelick-low-profile-seat-slide-and-locking-swivel.html)
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I used this (for ~$80): https://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_200487875_200487875
The reason I chose this one is that it is heavy duty and the hole pattern *almost* matches our seats. I just had to open up a couple of them a bit. I used the spacers it came with on the back two bolts to level it out so it doesn't lean when you swivel and gives shorter people a couple more inches of height. The lever is in a good spot too - easy to access, but not in the way of the slide lever.
It actually works great, but as I mentioned in another post, I put in on top of a new pair of factory slides and they are already starting to bend. I'm interested to see how Cyclone's new mount works out - I like the idea of slide and swivel in one, durable part.
How about a power seat with tilt/recline...controlled from your touch screen?
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Thats not a bad idea;) You should see some of the fancy seat controls Garelick makes, there's a youtube.
I finished the pedestal, need to drill two mounting holes but want to measure first. I will have pics up tomorrow. It is a hair under 4" taller than original and I'm putting some compression springs in the back to level it and provide some suspension. Should be pretty cool and a big improvement over stock seating position, which sucks. Thats part of why the boats weren't well accepted, they obviously weren't set up by someone that pulled skiers and wakeboarders.
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[/img]OK here's the mount. I sandwiched the mount between two 5/16" 10" wide aluminum plates. Bottom one is hinged and attaches to front two mounting points of seat tracks on the pedestal. I centered it ( no port stbd offset)and mounted it with the seat adjustment midranged on the new mount, but centered at the point of the current location of the seat, about 3" aft of center adjustment, where the track is bent from me sitting on the back of the seat to navigate effectively. At this position, the seat swivels 180 deg.
It does rotate around on a plane of about 25 deg, but I will fix that tomorrow with two motorcycle fatboy seat springs mounted to the rear seat track mounting holes, that the hinged plate will sit on, leveling it. Might have to add a spring or three but that's cheap and easy.
The seat is 4" higher, and is closer to the steering wheel, which is low on an Epic. I think it is perfect now, depends how you want to see out of the windshield on plane and how tall you are. I tilt the wheel up anyway but you may prefer shopping kart kiddie car steering wheel position. You can do that but you can't swivel 180 at the furthest reaches of aft seat position.
If you wanted to go lower you could easily cut/modify the boats angled pedestal base. It is rugged, about 3/8" thick with reinforcement. On my boat, there's a tank under the floorboard, but either way you could easily reinforce and use a straight up tube pedestal base mounted to floor. It's just a hollow fiberglass platform, no big whup.
Access to slide adjustment is tight, it's on starboard side. It's easy to access once you turn 45 deg or so. I'm good with it.
I'll get some installed pics up tomorrow, it was raining buckets all day
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old seat track is sitting on top for perspective. underneath seat was dis-gus-ting
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Here's some pics, works great:)