Removing bench seat?

[bkft]

I have a general question regarding my ’84 14’ Alumacraft. What would be involved in removing the middle bench seat to open up some floor space? Also, would this mess with the structural integrity of the boat?

[Steve Bakken]

The two things to keep in mind when you remove structural parts of the boat is strength of the sidewall and floatation. When we remove a seat at the boat shop, we replace the same amount of floatation that we took out, somwhere else on the boat. Often, we hide some up under the splashwell, or under the gunwhale (if there's a sill), or we put it under the floor if we're installing one. When you weaken the sidewall, you have to re-brace it somehow. We often use the seat bracket as a brace and just run it from where it's attached to the sidewall, down at an angle and attach it to the floor. Or you can build a side storage compartment and make sure that it's attached to both the sidewall and the floor. Good luck on your project.

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Steve @ Bakken's Boat Shop www.bakkensboatshop.com

[Steve Bakken]

bump

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Steve @ Bakken's Boat Shop www.bakkensboatshop.com

[Steve Bakken]

There are a few pictures on our HSOforum that should help give you an idea. Basically, there's USUALLY some kind of brackets attaching the seat to the sidewall. Before you completely remove the seat, you want to come up with some kind of plan to attach this to your floor. How you do it all depends on what the factory used and how they attached it. Sometimes we even leave a stub of the seat intact and make some kind of storage compartment out of it. Hope this helps.

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Steve @ Bakken's Boat Shop www.bakkensboatshop.com

[AaronM]

Steve, I really appreciate your posts in this forum. Could you explain a bit more on how you rebrace after you take a seat out? You wouldnt have any pictures handy would you? Thanks again.

[Steve Bakken]

bump

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Steve @ Bakken's Boat Shop www.bakkensboatshop.com