1999 Elite V Captain Seat cracking repair

[leedawg 0]

Hey guys thought I would post up a little tutorial on repairing drivers seat of an elite V. I have a new to me 1999 elite V and noticed my seat was cracked in front and in the back. The poly base on this seat seems a little light and it looks as if though somebody pulled hard on the top and it had a backward left force on it which broke the front right blind nut mount as well as cracked in the back left mount.  

I have a 1997 Donzi same thing happened I suppose its cheaper to use plastic vs something more substantial as a seat base like meatal of some sort. Well i called Fineline and they were zero help said they don't have anything for a legacy boat like this one and I would have to have something custom fabricated. Well I decided I would just have to fix it. I thought about hits for awhile and decided the best option would be to reinforce the base with a plate and utilize the other unused blind nuts as well as add a couple of rivnuts to the base to mount the base to an aluminum plate. 

 

The first thing I did was heat the base to get the cracked pieces back into their original locations. After I heated the plastic up I used a screw driver to mush the pieces together lightly welding them back together however this is not that strong but will hold them in their appropriate locations. Be careful not to get the base to hot or you will ruin the base. 

Here are some photos of the welded areas of the poly base of the seat. 

I then took a 1/4" 6061 aluminum plate and cut it out to the dimensions of the seat base plus about 3/8 of an inch so that it goes beyond front part of the base a small amount. The plan was to basically use the aluminum plate mount to the seat rails and mount the poly base of the seat to the aluminum plate thus givI did ing far more mounting points for the poly base to connect to, and spread the forces applied on the seat out over a larger area of the poly base. 

It was difficult to find a reference point on the base to measure off of, due to tapered surfaces but got it close enough with calipers. I drilled out holes in the plate that line up with all of the blind nuts on the poly base. You can do this with hand held drill and scribing all the holes out and center punching them. I have the luxury of having a mill and lathe and it was much faster to just mount the plate on the mill and use the DRO to plot out the holes. I counter sunk all of the holes that were in line with the seat rails and then offset the mounting holes of the seat rails about 3/8 of an inch and drilled and tapped them for 1/4-20 bolts. 

I did make one measuring error at the back of the seat hence the two holes counter sunk right next to each other. 

I then wanted to add a mounting point on the opposite side of the crack for strength. So I drilled a 3/8" hole in both front corners and placed 1/4 inch rivnuts into the holes. 

This  next pictures show the plate mounted to the poly base of the seat. 

And finally I had to make some spacers that were about .450" high to clear the track lock to bolt the seat back down to the tracks. You can see the spacers and then finally the seat bolted back down to the tracks. 

The seat feels very solid now and the only play that I can feel in the seat is the play that is in the actual tracks that the seat is mounted to. Hope this helps if anybody else encounters this problem with their boat. Happy boating!!!