For those inclined to some minor fabrication, you can make your own
version of the very rare single middle seat. You need the lower portion
of the 2 person middle seat. Unbolt and remove everything from it that
can come off. Keep the seatbelts to use on the new single seat. Cut off
the portion of the 2 person base farthest from the sliding door leaving
both full supports for the side and center of the remaining section.
Then obtain the front seat swivel top plate from a Westy, the piece that
has seat tracks. This can be unbolted easily from any junker Westy. Weld
this to the new single person base. Bolt on a set of seat belts removed
earlier. Install any Vanagon front seat on the new base. Now you have a
single seat, but one that does not swivel. Yes, I have done this.

If you get hold of the entire swivel assembly instead of just the upper
seat plate you can make a swivel version but it is more work. The lower
plate is smaller than the upper plate and doesn't fully bridge the base
supports like the upper plate does. You need to add metal to the new
base section so the lower plate can be properly attached to it.

Mark

pickle vanagon wrote:

>
> Some questions:
> 1) Occasionally 5th seats pop up on the samba for large amounts of money.
> But these appear to have a storage compartment, and it seems like they may
> not flip up.  What's up with the ones that flip up?  Are they really
> different from the ones with the storage compartment?  Are they even rarer?
>