Seat over cooler on SAN 230

[waveman]

I bought a 236 last year and overall have been overly pleased with the boat. The only thing that I feel Nautique could have done better on is the seat over the cooler. My wife especially gets annoyed when she has to told the seat with her shoulder, the cooler lid with her forearm and then search through the cooler for things. I have been telling her that I would come up with something to fix it. I had a few thoughts:

1. Use a gas shock just like all the other compartments do, the only thing that I am afraid of is the shock interfering with the handles of the cooler, buy maybe it wouldn't.

2. The newer boats use mostly parallelogram hinges for the interior seats. This seems to work good for them, but I think that it would pull the seat out further when its up, possibly prohibiting the cooler from fully opening.

3. Attach a bar onto the seat that could easily hinge down to the floor to hold the seat base up.

If anyone has any thoughts or experiences with this it would be greatly appreciated. Talking to the dealer and looking at the 2013 230's, they have never offered anything to hold the seatbase up, which makes me wonder if why. I'm ok with experimenting around, but I dont want to end up with unused holes in the gelcoat.

Jason

[NautiqueJeff]

I really like the self-supporting hinges on the G Series boats. You can easily flip the seat base up with one hand. I am not sure about your concern with the base coming out too far for the cooler though. I suppose that could be an issue.

[Miljack]

I've got an '08 230 and have been "noodling" on an idea like this for the cooler seat. I see the hindrance as the molded in areas for the handles of a hard cooler. We replaced our hard cooler with a soft sided ACS version (which we think gives us more capacity), so I'm going to have a look at trying to update to the G type of parallelogram hinges. I think with a soft cooler and these hinges, good to go!

[waveman]

I hadn't pondered the idea of switching to a soft sided cooler, but the more I think about it, the more I like it! The igloo cooler isn't that great, so I would assume you could get a soft sided cooler that would keep ice as long or longer, and it could take up more of the space in the cooler area. Which soft sided cooler did you go with Miljack? I may try to go look at some of the G series boats at the dealer down the road and take some measurements of the paralellogram hinges, my only concerns would be that they would need to mount where the molded in cutouts are, but that could probably be remedied with some composite spacers. Let me know if you end up doing it, I would love to see one completed!

[ffmedic74]

You could always take out the cushion for the seat and have a custom cooler/cushion combo made.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk

[Miljack]

@Waveman, this is the cooler we purchased;

http://www.aocoolers.com/index.cfm?f...6&ParentCat=22

West Marine carries them, and sometimes have them on sale. AO calls this a "48 pack" cooler, and I can say this is a BIG cooler! We used it on a recent boat camping trip, and the contents in this cooler stayed cold and there was ice left at the end of a 2 night trip. This cooler almost completely "fills" the cooler compartment in our 230, maybe if I had them build a custom version for me, I would get them to make it a little longer and higher, maybe 6" longer and 3" taller. To us, storage volume is better and the cooler is way better than the stock Igloo.

I was thinking along the same lines as you re: handle "molds" in the front and back of that compartment, they are right where the hinges would want to be mounted. A piece of Starboard or even teak routed out and mounted there could handle the seat hinges...

@FF, a really trick idea would be to build in the cooler in the stock compartment. One could insulate the bottom and sides of the deck, there are drains there already, so the ice/water would run into the bilge. A new outside "wall" would need to be fabricated in place of the plastic grid that is stock. I've been trying to figure out a way to insulate the transom cooler/storage compartment to do the same thing...

[Dave Rittiman]

If anyone measures the G series hinge and it fits would be really interested to know. Be great to be able to swap them out from the stock 230's . The soft cooler idea is brilliant my cooler handles are starting to get pretty clapped out.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[ViSoR]

This thread is relevant to my interests!

[knucklenitz]

Reviving an old one here. Did anyone come up with a solution for a shock on the ice chest seat?

[charlesml3]

Having owned two 230s, we just quit with the cooler under the seat. It just isn't practical. Someone is always sitting there and they have to get up every ten minutes to get someone a beer. I bought a soft-side cooler that holds 36 cans or so and we just leave it out on the floor. It isn't all that huge and seems to work placed just left and back of the driver's seat.

-Charles

[ScooterMcgavin]

This thread may be helpful to you.
https://www.planetnautique.com/vb5/f...er-seat-in-230

[shag]

This thread may be helpful to you.
https://www.planetnautique.com/vb5/f...er-seat-in-230

See this thread above... I did the gas shock and it was pretty straight forward... Works great!