I am trying to install a third row seat in my '91 240 wagon. Most of it seems fairly straight forward, but there's bracket that holds the latch when the jumpseat is open. In the wagon I took the seat out of, this bracket is bolted to a nut recessed in the steel bed of the wagon. In my wagon there is no hole with this recessed nut. Is my only option to drill a whole in the bed and use a nut with a flange below the steel of the bed?

The lower part of the seatbelts for the jumpseat seem to mount to a similar hole near the bottom of the interior side of the rear wheel wells? Any idea if those holes are present in my car before I tear up the carpeting to find out for sure?

Thanks,
Muz

Muz,

No need to for me to e-mail. I find that I downloaded the instructions from Art Benstein's site (see another post to that effect below), and you can do the same. The instructions are at: http://cleanflametrap.com/thirdseat.html

When I looked them over just now, I realized that there are more significant differences between the earlier and later seat models than I realized, and the holes are not all the same. It looks like some of the holes for earlier model seat are already in place.

A. Everyone, includng me, agrees that the anchor holes in the roof are already there, under the headliner.

B. There are no anchor holes for the seatbelt ends in my '86, but it is reported below that they are already there in the '91. In that case, the attach points are certainly already reinforced.

C. So that leaves the floor. You have found that the '91 has no holesa there. I believe the instructions are pretty helpful on how to locate and drill those holes, except that your reinformcement and latch may require them to be a little differently spaced than is the case for the later model seat and reinforcement.

Again, good luck.
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jds

by "floor" do you mean the cargo compartment lid that the seat bolts onto the inner side of?

If so, what we did on the 1983 <> 1979 swap was to swap the lids, too, as the color was close enough and it was way simpler than the alternative.

The years involved with my swap could be too old to yield helpful information, so use my posts as dierctions on where to look, nothing exact. That would be enec to the anchors for the hand grip above the cargo door, they were there from the factory, under the headliner.
Regards,

Bob

:>)

Hi BC

Sorry for any ambiguity.

What you refer to as the "lid" I referred to in my earlier post as the cargo "shelf".

And by "floor" I do not mean that mostly-wooden assembly, but rather the horizontal sheet metal section of the body that you see when you lift the back end of the shelf (or lid). I think Muzmuz calls that the "bed" of the cargo compartment.

Anything not securely fastened to good metal will come loose in an accident.
And Volvo's seat designers have further determined that just a bolt and nut through a hole in the sheet metal wouldn't be good enough in an accident, either. Hence, the troublesome angle iron that mounts (using at least four heavy bolts) between the floor and the gas tank. It would take a LOT of upward pulling force to pull that up through the floor.

While the latch mechanism involved gives the visual impression that this whole imaginative and cumbersome creation is designed to solidly anchor the seat, my take is that what is truly important is that it solidly anchors the middle latches of the two seatbelts, so that neither the seat occupants nor the seat itself are flying anywhere in an accident -- that is, provided the seat occupants are not heavier than the max recommended weight.

I suspect that the '79 240 might not have had quite secure an set-up. Perhaps the angle-iron arrived later.
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jds

First - await the instructions that jdsullivan is sending.

Second - I swapped my 3rd seat into a car without, and we found that NO holes needed to be drilled, just a few through carpet and those took a small cut.

For the mount of the lower seat belt ends, there was a nut already welded in place that we found by looking from the outside up in the wheel well. Poke an icepick (or something) through the hole in the nut and you will find the spot in the carpet where that bolt goes. It was amazingly easy.

Nuts for the upper seatbelt anchor bolts, behind the headliner, were welded in place, too. With very clean fingers pull a little headliner free and you'll find them. Takes a little hole in the headliner and the bolts go on in.

We had the donor car (mine) and the donee (his) in the driveway together, which made it even easier. Having two people helped, too.

Good Luck,

Bob

:>)

Muz,

On rereading your message, it sounds like you might want to re-visit that donor wagon to retrieve its reinforcements (which would give you some experience at removing a wagon shelf, since several bolts have to come out to remove the angle iron piece).
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jds

Muz,

I have an electronic copy of the installation instructions, and I will e-mail them from home tonight. They are precise about which holes need to be drilled, and where. There are at least two seat designs and the instructions are for the later one (no armrests), but I think the holes placment remained the same when they changed designs, in case you have the one with armrests.

I am sure that no holes are pre-drilled in the wagon floor.

I am cannot remember about the inner-fender arches, but I think they also are undrilled. But removing the cloth inner-fender arch covers from those wells requires only that a few screws be removed, as the covers are held in place mostly by pre-cut slits slipped over metal tabs in the body.

In both the floor and the arches, Volvo intends that you install on the exterior side of the holes the reinforcements they provide with the seat.

I believe that the reinforcements for the seatbelt ends have threads for the securing bolts.

The reinforcement for the floor (which effectively anchors the latches in the middle of the seatbelts) is a heavy-duty piece of angle iron with several nuts welded in. Installing it properly requires that several holes be drilled in the floor, each about a half-inch in diameter. As the gas tank is just below the floor, of course, this needs to be done with considerable care. And removing the cargo shelf is necessary to get the access to the floor that you will need.

Removing the shelf is less difficult than you might think -- a total of nine screws secure the fixed part of the shelf, seven in front (behind the rear seat, visible when you raise the front hinged part of the shelf) and two in the rear (visible when you raise the rear hinged part of the shelf). And you can mount the seat frame to it before you reinstall it, which should make that part of the job easier.

If you don't put in the reinforcements, the seat belts would come loose in a serious crash, and as the seat is designed only for children below a certain weight (even WITH the reinforcements), that is cause for concern.

If it were easy, it wouldn't be any fun.

Good luck,

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jds

Saw these on the net: http://cleanflametrap.com/#links