bench seat in back of t4

[imartin]

Have purchased a bench seat and installed it with my dad, attached plates to floor etc.
Have got a local auto engineer to install seat belts, this engineer is not RTA approved for re registering as a 5 seater.
Rang an RTA approved engineer and he has quoted me 900 dollars to look at it and pass it said it would take about 7 hours.

Does this seem right? If so I've made the wrong decision, should have gone for a new seat and had it installed where I bought it from rather than a second hand one!

[Sunny43.5]

Hi Imartin , I used to be in the business of seat manufacturing and installation etc . for vans wagons etc. The problem with certification is each state does it differently . Here in Qld my license would give me the ability to fit an extra seat and seat belts and issue a new compliance plate with increased seating capacity , along with child restrains if needed . NSW operates in a totally different way , back in the late 1990,s to early 2000,s in NSW an approved fitter could fit the seats but you would need an Engineers Certificate to change the vehicle category from a commercial van to passengers van . We often used to get an engineer to certify some of our conversions as the rules were very complex . As for new versus second hand there is a reason seats are sometimes made for specific uses so if your seat was out of a VW van say factory seat an engineer would need to see that it was fitted to the same specs as factory .Just fitting reinforcing plates does not always satisfy the engineers , the main trouble with second hand seats is that they must be equivalant to the year van in question or out of a later spec van . If you believe that the price is too high see if RTA have a list of certified engineers and check prices we never had to pay more than $250 for our engineer to do his thing but that was ten years ago so times would definetly changed . As for certifying the van ask the engineer what he is doing for the money as the seat will probably only have 4 bolts or a couple more to hold it and the seat belts are only 8 bolts and it only takes 15 minutes to crawl underneath to see if they are the correct dimension plates with the correct diameter bolts and type so on . Somehow I think the person is taking you for a ride .
But keep one thing here in mind the person who issues a compliance certificate is taking responsibility for the lives of the passengers who sit in the back of your van and these guys have take out massive insurance covers to protect themselves from litigation . So you can see the dillema but 7 hrs I don,t think so . Howard

[Sunny43.5]

I am sure someone on the Forum has posted some info about seat conversions before , so I will stand corrected if someone has more updated information . Howard PS I let my license lapse 5 years ago so I am probably not up to date on todays regs .