Anyone fitted a battery under a factory swivel seat?

AndrewD

New Member
Hi, Just collected my van today and it's time to crack on with converting it.
I've been looking at loads of great posts on fitting a leisure battery under the driver seat, but I am yet to work out if any of them was a factory fitted swivel seat.
If you can point me to an existing post, or if you've already done this I'd love some advice.
Cheers,
Andrew
 
The Cali has a battery under the passenger swivel seat. Along with the fuse box so it's definitely possible.
 
I fitted a battery under each swivel seat in my California. It's a fairly easy upgrade.

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Theses batteries are 189mm high and the seats swivel without any issues.
 
Hi, and thanks everyone - especially for the pictures. It is day one for me, my van arriving this morning, but I did do a bit of measuring and it's great to confirm 189mm batteries fit. I'll post some pics when the job is done.

To answer some of the questions, its a T28 panel van, and this will be the only additional battery. I had chosen the same DC-DC (Victron) as in one of the pics.

Thanks again everyone - I can't believe the response I got, so helpful and so quick. Amazing!
 
Was this a third leisure battery or did you move second battery from the rear compartment?

Or do you have a beach?
It's a Beach. I'm not sure how this could be done on an Ocean etc. The battery bank would be difficult to wire correctly without substantial rewiring.
 
I always feel so inferior when i see other people realy neat and tidy wire jobs
I just saw this and my immediate comment was ‘how do people get their wiring so neat’?
I took my seat out the other to tidy my wiring and fit a new positive busbar and it still looks awful.
 
I have got a 130ah battery and it’s a proper shoehorn job. Spent ages making a ply battery tray for under drivers seat only to find there’s is a protruding bit of metal under my seat swivel that clashes with it. Solution was a low profile metal tray bolted underneath the seat base. Took the opportunity to move the battery to under the passenger seat. Will fit my shunt in there alongside it leaving much more room underneath the drivers seat for chargers and hopefully enough room to route a diesel heater vent into the van too. That’s the plan, I’m working on it today so I expect that plan to change! I’m not expecting it to be tidy but tbh the van is a lockdown project, lockdown is over and I want the van done.
 
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first 4 are n/s seat, last one is o/s seat, battery is fitted now o/s, but thought I would show a useful location for the victron load shunt that fits neatly tucked away in the fromt channel of the seat sub frame. I moved the factory relay / fuse bracket to the front also and the ethernet type lead passes through the bracket easily in a direct line. As you can see I have made a few additional small holes in the seat bases for my components and fuses etc but figured fixed to steel is more robust than wood. If I want to put it back to standard it is the cost of a pair of bases? The change over switch selects either hook up or inverter to supply 240v in the rear. The inverter being underneath the plate. The isolator in front of the CTEK is to isolate the charge feed to the ctek so the leisure battery isn't constantly fed. I lost count of how many times I took the seats out and refitted them.
 
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