Is this a bad idea?

[familyvan]

Hi All,
THanks for making this an awesome forum.

I have been looking for some type of smaller 4x4 camper to fit my family of 5 (someday 6) mostly to travel the US and someday tour all over South America and Alaska.
I have often thought of a class B on the van chassis would be great, plus could use a ujoint conversion kit to make it 4x4 and redo the interior to fit.
However I keep coming back to the Fuso Chassis as you can fit a decent size box on smaller rig do to it being a cabover. So my question is putting seats with integrated seat belts in the camper portion. I figure as long as the are mounted securely it would be ok. I would even put in a roll cage over the seats for extra protection. Plus the box would be hard sided. So then I think of type of accidents and potential risks;

Head on collision or rear end someone, as long as seats are mounter securely should be ok
Getting t boned. THis is the tough one hopefully some type of roll cage would offer protection and the seats in it would be higher then most other
vehicles so that should help too. If it is a large semi that t bones well that is a different story....
Roll over, well hopefully the cage and shell do it's job
Getting rear ended, there should be enough vehicle to protect the occupants as I would put the seats near the front.

I currently look at the class b's out there and those fall to pieces in accidents as most are wood frame and fiber glass construction.

Sorry for such a long winded tought process, thanks for reading!
What are your guys and gals thoughts on a home build with seats built into the camper?

Should I move on and find another vehicle or keep dreaming of this one?
By the way this is a long term dream, I am just looking for input to decide if I just change my thoughts now.
THanks again!

 

[mog]

Sounds like you have though out all the angles.
As long as your seats (I would go with automotive type seats, not an RV type 'wood' seat), seat mounts, seatbelt mounts and whatever you put in for rollover/etc protect are mounted well, you should be safer then a 'normal' vehicle.
A lot of the time, it is the mounting that is not well thought out (tied into frame).
...
Head on- Yup, the seats you are adding are farther back so the cab, engine, frame will give tons of protection.
T-boned- Being higher then the impact zone will give a great deal of protection. T-boned by semi, every vehicle is pretty much in bad shape.
Roll over- Your cage and shell will add protection and the distance the seats are from the perimeter will add a lot of protection zone (aka: crumple zone).
Rear ended- huge distance with the frame and shell adding protection.
...
Egress in case of an accident. If you have a crawl-through to the cab, that is good. Also for communicating to rear passengers "if you don't stop that, I'll pull this Fuso over right now" :sombrero:
Also more then one door to camper or a roof exit (I'm installing a boat hatch on my camper as a skylight/vent/emergency exit)
...
Equipment/furnishings in the camper must be very secure so they do not become missiles in an accident, quick stops, or just rough roads

 

[chromisdesigns]

In many states, it is illegal for passengers to ride in a truck camper. If you did a build on the Fuso chassis that had a pass-through to the cab (using a rubber bellows, for instance), and the body was permamently mounted to the frame, then it is not a "truck camper" and you should be OK.

 

[kerry]

I put seat belts in the class A Mercedes motorhome I owned in Europe and had passengers ride in the dinette. Did the same thing in my Travco motorhome in the USA. My Wanderlodge came with seat belts installed on the couches. Not as safe as a standard car. Probably a lot safer than a motorcycle. from what I've seen, most Class A motorhomes built in the USA are not very strong so even the OE driver and passenger seats with seatbelts are pretty risky places to ride in my opinion. Especially older models.

 

[whatcharterboat]

What are your guys and gals thoughts on a home build with seats built into the camper?

Should I move on and find another vehicle or keep dreaming of this one?
By the way this is a long term dream, I am just looking for input to decide if I just change my thoughts now.
THanks again!

Hi

Even more important than the seats , is the seat belt fixing unless of course the seat belts are attached to the seat. Can't stress the importance enough of how the seat belts are attached. We put passenger seating in a box on the back of a Fuso everyday and call them a bus but to do that legally ( in Australia anyway) a lot of factors come into play.......for example we would need designated emergency exits on 3 surfaces, with one of them being large enough to get a stretcher through.......but most of that wouldn't apply to camper and I'm sure your laws are completely different too.

We definitely require constant communication between cab and the rear camper, whether that be a passthrough which is ideal or a sliding window in the back of the cab and another sliding window in the front of the body or even an intercom system is technically acceptable here. A carbon monoxide leak could be tragic and if the intercom failed you would never know. In my mind though the only one I would have is a proper passthrough......at least then the passengers could converse easily if necessary and the driver should always be able to check back in the mirror.

Airflow is probably something you also need to consider..... A vent at the front corners of the body that your rear passengers can flip open would work well cause you won't get much benefit from the front AC.

You can checkout Iain1250's build over in the unimog section ..... He's fitted rear seats into his rig already.

On our new campers, we fit seat up to 4 seat belts to the dinette but there is a substantial framework concealed and connected down to the subframe to accommodate the stresses associated with seat belts.

 

[jhrodd]

In the USA buses don't have seat belts. Even school buses. Newton's first law of motion doesn't apply to bodies in a bus.

 

[Amesz00]

In the USA buses don't have seat belts. Even school buses. Newton's first law of motion doesn't apply to bodies in a bus.

hahaha love it...
Australia is even better, newtons law applies to some buses but not others.. when the fed govt changed the ADR's (Aus Design Rules) to make seatbelts mandatory for buses (following several horrific coach accidents with many fatalities..) they didnt want to cop the enormous cost of retro-fitting seatbelts (in many cases impossible due to floor structure) to thousands of school and city buses around the country, so now we have the rules that, if a bus has low floor (under 1m off ground) or low back seats they dont need seatbelts.. although at least new school buses do have them..
if looking at fitting seats in a camper, one does have to remember that its not just the seatbelt, but what its attached to as well. when we did our engineer testing for coaches, we had to show that the seat mounts (in the floor) could take a forward load of almost 7tonne for a double seat...

 

[familyvan]

Thanks everyone.
Yea, I will definitely being putting in some type of pass through. As for the seats my plan was to purchase some either van seats or sprinter seats that come with 3 point harness built into the seat. That way I can focus on building solid bases tied into the sub frame.

Thanks again everyone