What I don't know about Chevy footroom won't hurt me, so kindly don't tell me......

So the first thing I think to myself, while blazing home from Galveston at night, tickled to death with my new acquisition at 85 mph, is "is this thing WANDERING a little, or is it just me?"

Then a couple days later, still tickled, blazing to work, I think, "thats funny, I sure am thinking about severe angle of my right ankle on the throttle a lot, is there something ironically constricted and uncomfortable about the seating in this huge, cavernous son of a b$#ch?"

So then I start reading the threads and learn "Oh, Hell Yeah," and "No s$#t."

NOW you twisted bast$#rds tell me.

Still love The Great Sea-Foam Whale. Still corrupted. Have Bilsteins ordered and planning some front-end work, figuring out how to move my seat back an inch or two, and made a little wooden block that sits under my heel so I don't have to lift my foot at such an angle for the throttle.......

k9dr

PS-- Pardon me. I cuss a lot. Profanity is kind of my idiom.

 

Do you have power or manual driver's seat?

My van had aftermarket conversion seats with a power driver's seat. I hated the aftermarket seats (bad back now enhanced by 8 screws and 3 rods holding together L2-L5) and ordered OEM Ford captain's chairs for the front thru Ebay from a converter. Oddly, the factory driver's seat did NOT fit on the Ford factory RV conversion power base. They actually use a different mount system for the seats....

Fortunately, the seats I bought came with new manual seat bases too. So my driver's seat became non-power.

On the top of the seat base are 4 holes where the seat mounts. On the driver's base, there was enough room so I could redrill the holes maybe 1.5" further rearward than the stock position. AND, I used the old trick passed on to me by a Ford engineer: washer stacks between the seat and the base. I think I have about 3/4" of washers under the front seat bolts and 1/4" under the rear bolts. This mimics the rise of a power seat that I use to take up leg length (front of the seat higher than the rear).

Passenger seat base does not have metal where I would move it back to, but I'm sure I can invent something using steel straps or something. (I have mounted Recaro aftermarket seats into cars and vans and have had to be inventive in the past too.)

If you have a power driver's seat, you may still be able to move the mounting holes in the base rearward, or move the mounting holes in the power unit's plates rearward.

Funny, but I remember the gas pedal angle being a bit weird when I bought my van. But I have given it no thought in the last 10 years, so I must have adapted or built new muscles that compensate for that. Maybe it was the additional legroom that I got with my drill and washer stacks...

George

 

JWA and K9DR--my prior van was a '96 GMC Savana which had magic footroom on the right side and I LOVED the 350 engine. Footroom came courtesy of the engine and front wheels moved forward compared to Ford and the lack of "tuck" on the bottom of the body design. Body looks like a toaster.

I bought it new (using my late stepdad's GM option 1 discount).

In the 66k miles I owned it, it went thru a starter (stuck ON), 2 fuel pumps (leaving my wife and baby son stranded in a snowstorm in the Detroit ghetto one time), alternator, 7 valve body replacements and 3 full transmission rebuilds or replacements (NOT kidding--read that again if you need to), windows that fell out of their bonded hinges, 4 or 5 oxy sensors, a glovebox door that flexed with the light switch and killed my battery numerous (and inconvenient) times until I removed the glove box light bulb, interior trim panels that fell out when the doors were closed. Door hinges are welded in on those vans and can't be replaced or adjusted. I bought a 60k mile warranty on the Savana and figure that the warranty work cost GM well over $10,000.

The crowning glory (and last straw) was at 66k miles, the intake manifold gaskets dissolved (DexCool is 100k mile antifreeze but dissolves gaskets at 66k miles). Out of warranty but my letter writing skills got me a 50% rebate from GM on the work.

It was the only vehicle I have ever traded in to a dealer (for my E150) because I could not sell it to any human being. On the way to the Ford dealer, the check engine light came back on (probably another oxy sensor) but they took the van (for their lowball trade-in price) anyway.

I vowed never again to buy GM products, despite having owned 10 GM vehicles in my past.

So my Savana had legroom on the right side. But it was the Van from Hell. Really.

George