Sturdy bench seat clamp or other mount?

[KC8QVO]

I am looking to run a regular boat seat on a bench seat style boat. The benches are aluminum gunnels and a plywood top, older version of a lund wc. I was at bass pro shops and looked at what they had and was not real impressed. The clamp and locking swivel they carry dont look well built to me. Does anyone have any experience with them? What do you have that works? I am half tempted to make my own clamp but I may be short on time.

 

[fishrdan]

What were you looking at, at BPS, the swivel mounts that clamp to the front and back of the seat bulkhead's? (I don't like them...)

If you want the seat and swivel mounted to the plywood seat top, stainless steel T-nuts mounted from below the plywood would work very well. You will need to remove the plywood seats to install the T-nuts though, drill and then epoxy the T-nuts into the plywood.

 

[KC8QVO]

See below for the mount.

I stopped by the store on my way home and got one, along with the seat linked below too. I figured for $30 the mount was worth a shot.

The mount is better quality than I thought it was, but I don't know if I like it. The directions say you have to install the clips to really secure it, but the seat bench has a wood top with an overshooting lip (on the front, open back). I am not real sure how I am going to do that on the edge of the wood. I may also not be able to get the mount far enough over to the side which would require an offset bracket for the seat to get it in the right spot.

The seat needs to be temporary - I got it for when I use the boat. Lots of others use it too, and the boat is stored on our dock upside down in the off-season so I don't want the seat and parts to deteriorate.

 

[KC8QVO]

Hmm my links didn't work. Try this.

 

[KC8QVO]

and here is the seat.

 

[KC8QVO]

It looks like that seat has some less than favorable reviews about the base not holding up. I may try to find something else. So any more seat and base ideas are welcome.

 

[KC8QVO]

See pictures for what I came up with. I reinforced the seat with a sheet metal plate. It looks like where the seat base flexes is within 3/4-1" of the mounting bolts (see first picture of the bottom of the seat base - you can see the gaps where the white foam is showing thru - on the back side, left in the picture, this is the point that the flexing started) so the extra material with the plate, as thin as it is, should make the base more "rigid" and last longer.

I put about 120-140 miles on it this weekend, in some rough waters (rain and wind all day one day and I did about 80 miles that day). The swivel base wasn't nearly as bad as I anticipated, however when I was in a cross wind and the boat was leaning it was an uncomfortable position. I used the swivel to rotate the seat back to be more towards the up wind/lower sloped side but then my arm was at a weird angle to the tiller handle. Most of the time it was real comfortable - even bouncing and splashing through 2' chop.