[rv7charlie]

I remember seeing some discussion of this many months ago when I discovered it after building my seat backs, but I can't find any posts using the search engine (too many hits).

How did you cope with the interference? Move the entire seat back inboard (mine would need to move ~1/2"), or trim the outside edge of the adjuster?

Thanks,

Charlie

 

[Brantel]

Move it... Everyone will notice you notched the angle adjuster but if you have an offset hinge, nobody will ever see it.

 

[rv7charlie]

That was quick.

No issues with the effective seat positions being an inch closer together, & having the sticks offset a half inch between your knees?

Charlie

 

[Brantel]

The plans are easy to misread on where to put the hinges on the floor pans. If you do it wrong, the seats will hit the rollbar. If you do it correct, they won't.

Tons of people fall in this trap.

Move it over till the adjuster just clears the bolt head on the roll bar and you will be fine.

 

[rv7charlie]

Yeah...Brian is *sorta* right. When I built them, everything fit. When I added the roll bar, they no longer fit. (7/8" on the seat bottom hinge halves, per plans). Moving the seat backs over enough to safely clear the roll bar & bolt heads means that the inside edge will hit the flap cover mounting flange at the bottom when the back is tilted forward, but that only happens with it pinned to the middle position. Also, the seat backs are no longer centered on the control stick cutouts, but that can't be too big a deal.

Oh well, it's only one more day wasted. Actually less, if I subtract the hour I wasted hunting for the gas strut mounting screws that ("oops; sorry 'bout that") aren't listed on the parts list.

Did you guys know that the company that's capable of making the most popular & doubtless the best engineered line of kits on the market can't figure out how to make a computer file out of the computer file they print when they build a kit order?

Charlie
(Thanks, Brian; seat backs have been modified.)

 

[miyu1975]

anyone have any pics showing this issue?...as it will be coming up in my near future.

 

[Brantel]

Moving the seat backs over enough to safely clear the roll bar & bolt heads means that the inside edge will hit the flap cover mounting flange at the bottom when the back is tilted forward, but that only happens with it pinned to the middle position.

This is a design flaw but you will not notice it much once you have your seat cushions in as they stop the seatback from being able to fold that far forward (at least not easily).

 

[rv7charlie]

Ryan, I'll try to snap a couple of pics today.

Charlie

 

[[email protected]]

the interference is only at the middle hinge and can easily be addressed with a bit of filing... as brantel suggests it is likely not an issue on the pilot side with stick and cushions installed but might be irritating on the co-piolot side if you could not fully fold the seat forward with the stick removed... i have set the copilot seat up avoiding the center hinge and went ahead and relieved the interference on the pilot side... no big deal.

 

[rzbill]

There is one other possibility

The advice above is all correct. If built exactly to the plans, the seats will clear all obstructions at the top, but hit the flap cover flange at the bottom when folded forward without the seat pads in place.

There is one other aspect that could influence the interferance. When building my seatbacks, I noticed that the corrugated seatback sheet was not square because of variation in the corrugation bends. I did not recognize it until I was done (I actually trimmed some of the angles to fit the seat back sheet). Fortunately for me, this did not affect the seat enough to cause any interferances. However, if the seatback was way off, down at the hinge area, one could theoretically build the seat out of square enough to cause an interferance at the top. This can be avoided by NOT doing what I did. The correct way is to make the seatback angles to the print length and then pull the corrugated sheet to fit the angles. This will pretty much force the overall seatback to be square (or square enough to work fine).

 

[Noah]

I had seat back roll bar interference in my 7 much the same as Dan C. had in his. They were built exactly to plan and it really had me bugged until I switched the seat backs left and right then then were perfect. Are you sure your's are wrong? It took me a week to finally figure out what I had done.

Same here. Swap the seats before doing anything. Solved this problem for me!

 

[rv7charlie]

Steven's pic clearly illustrates the same issue I have.

One thing I might consider if I were building the backs now, would be to build them slightly out of square. If the outboard vertical angle were angled inboard at the top by around 1/2-5/8" (the adjuster would have to be shortened, as well), the seat back could be moved out by 1/2", giving about an inch more elbow room between the seats.

Charlie