Now that you are done with the first project of the van build, we are on to step 2! This part of the van build is totally optional. If you don’t want your front seats to swivel, then this is not the post for you, and you can move onto step 3 (sound deadening). But, if you’re looking for a swivel seat in your home-on-wheels, then keep on reading!
Unclipping the Battery
The first step is unclipping the battery. You do not have to unclip both the positive and the negative terminals to the battery. We just unclipped the negative terminal. The car battery lives under the mat of the driver’s seat. The mat should come up by simply twisting the plastic knobs on the mat, and then giggling it out of there. It can be a little bit of a pain, but it’s also not rocket science. After you are done removing the cover to the battery, you will see the battery with a red cover to the left. Under here is the positive terminal, leave this alone. On the right side, you will see a black wire that is screwed down to a bolt. This is the negative terminal and the one you will unhook. You can use a ratchet (socket wrench) and ratchet set to loosen the nut holding the wire on. Please consider using insulated tools and gloves just in case. Once the black wire is detached, keep it off to the side somewhere. While it is highly unlikely that the black wire would be able to touch the red (positive) terminal because of the cover on the battery, keep this wire far away from that area. Never touch red and black! You can ruin your battery, and there will be a LOT of sparks! You will want to leave the battery disconnected for at least 15 mins before going on to the next step and unclipping the airbags.
Unclipping the Airbag Clips and Unscrewing the Seat
Next, you will go to the passenger seat and remove the jack from under the seat. It is housed in a black plastic suitcase-looking contraption and it has a few clips that hold it in place. Once the space under the seat is freed up, you will be able to see three clips to your left. They are orange, yellow, and black in our van. The orange and yellow clips are easy to see, but the black clip was hidden in a jumble of wires that were zip tied together. You can use a razor knife to undo any zip ties, just don’t cut any wires! As you can see in the pictures below, the clips have two pieces that fit within each other. Once those are unclipped, you can go ahead and start to unscrew the seat itself. For this, you will need your socket wrench/ ratchet and ratchet set again along with your T-40 star bit. Once all of the top screws are unscrewed (2 in the front, 2 in the back), you can go ahead and lift off the seat. Find a nice spot for it while you install the swivel seat piece.
Adding on the Swivel Seat Piece
Firstly, we purchased our swivel seat from Amazing Auto LLC on Ebay. There are other swivel seats that you could get, but this is the one that we chose. Take the swivel seat piece out of the box. You will notice that it seems to have two overlapping pieces. The bottom piece will mount to the area where your seat will go, the seat base, to keep it steady and in place. The top piece, when the red level is pulled, will move (swivel). This is how the swivel seat works. The bottom holds the seat in place for safety purposes, while the top piece allows your seat to move. When installing, you will want to offset the top and the bottom pieces in order to gain access to the screw holes. You can see how they should be offset in the pictures below. you are going to add on the swivel seat piece and screw that on. When you put on the swivel seat piece, the red lever should be in the front. Use the nuts and bolts provided to attach the swivel seat piece. Once this piece is attached to the seat base, you will bring your actual chair and line it up appropriately with the swivel seat piece. Put the wires from the seat into the hole of the swivel seat piece. These will be attached afterwards. Next, you will need to attach the seat in the front with the appropriate nuts and bolts so that the seat can be moved up and there is room to attach the seat in the back. Once the swivel seat piece is attached to the base and the chair itself is attached to the swivel seat piece, then the swivel seat is installed!
Last Things
The last things you need to do are re-clip the orange, yellow, and black airbag clips, and then reorganize them with zip ties (if you like). The very last step is to reconnect the negative terminal of the car battery. Congratulations! You have just installed your passenger side swivel seat in the 2019 Ram Promaster 2500! While we did not to the driver side, I assume that this would be a similar process (but make sure to do your own research if you want to put in a driver side as well!). Here is our swivel seat YouTube video. If you are still unsure after reading and watching, please do not hesitate to reach out to us on our contact page.