Adding 2nd row of bucket/captain seats to Express van?

[zuren]

Before anyone recommends it, I am currently reading through the "Sienna seats" thread but it seems to be mostly geared toward Ford vans; 33 pages is a lot of info to sort through.

Life has changed since I first built the Buffalo with the sofa bed in a RB50 style layout. We now have a 3 year old, and another kid on the way, so having the seat that far back from the front is a problem. We are always choosing my wife's car rather than the van for family trips. You cannot easily hand back snacks, toys, etc. to the back seat. With the road noise, it is even hard to hear my son's voice, so either we need a different setup or a different vehicle.

My sofa bed can slide forward/back, so my hope and goal is to be able to slide the sofa back to have a functional 3rd row seat and be able to walk through the middle of the 2nd row.
Has anyone put Sienna seats, or Sienna type seats, in their Express vans? I would love to hear about experiences or links to installs. Another member here floated the idea of using a L-Track w/ bracket solution. What are opinions of mounting a seat in this fashion, considering young children will be strapped into these seats?

Thanks!

 

[grampswrx]

There has to be a way. Check out weldtec designs. I know he has been working on a ton of express vans and always has seats in there.

 

[sendinteA]

Installing 2021 Sienna Seats in a 2019 Chevy Express van

I am not sure if anyone did it this way, but I installed Sienna bucket seats into the second row of the Express. I kept the factory rail mounts so this can be used in any of the rows that accept the 3 seat bench seats.
Disclaimer: I am not a fabricator. I own a welder and some basic tools and I was able to do this in three days. I tried to overbuild it as much as I can, but there is still room for improvement.

I started by buying the Sienna seats locally. Hind sight I didn't need the built in seat belts.

I wanted to preserve the factory rails and also wanted to save my good seat.I found a set of dirty seats on Marketplace for $200. Took one apart, cut off everything that was in my way, down to basically the frame.

Then I cut the top 5" off the factory seat legs. Drilled and welded the legs to the frame. I used 1.5" 1/4" thick angle iron.
Notched the back of the frame and rested the anle iron inside that. Welded it to the front under the seat frame.

I cut 8 pieces of the angle iron to about 2" length and welded it to the angle iron. Had to notch the corners the front mount pieces to clear a bolt inside the seat.

The back mount of the Sienna seat is mounted as far back as possible on the frame. I had to cut the little guide pieces off the Sienna seat mount to get an exta 1/2" as the seats sit a little bit higher.

Last step was to drill 8 holes throgh the existing holes the Sienna seat had and used some 3/8" Grade 8 bolts.