Transmission tunnel/passenger foot space differences?

[(beans)]

Just saw my first image of the "dog house" in a 7.3... and was shocked. Looks like the front passenger can never stretch their legs out all the way?

This van thing seems like a giant pile of compromises from ford-i-ness reliability piece of mind issues all the way to the engineering versus profit margin crisis of american vehicles.

Kind of underwhelmed, which sucks because I was so excited when the van bug first struck.


So my question is: Are there giant transmission tunnels causing foot space issue for the front passenger in all models or are some engine options better than others?

 

[Herbie]

It's an issue in just about every van - at least every van that doesn't have a giant truck-snout out front (like the Nissan NVs, etc.).

My solution in the Astro was to set the passenger seat an additional 2-3" aft when I built new mounting brackets to accommodate the seat swivel. 2-3" doesn't sound like much, but the footbox is pretty tapered, so even that much tends to net a decent amount of extra foot room. I would have gone farther aft, but then you run into issues with seatbelt safety since the pickup points on the B-pillar don't move. If you had seat-mounted belts, you could cheat the seat as far aft as makes sense to you.

 

[DougsE350]

Yep they all have bad leg room on the passenger side. Late dodge vans are the worst.

 

[philos]

Get a shorter wife?

 

[Petrolburner]

Move the seat back or get a Nissan. Or ride in the back.

 

[(beans)]

Good stuff guys, this sent me on a great few hours of Nissan NV research... but saw some rumbling of them being discontinued die to poor sales... which then sent me on the Fuso FG/Canter search...hahaha