GB2212118A - Vehicle cab seating - Google Patents

Abstract

The cab provides two rows of seating 23, 25 arranged back to back. The seat squabs are arranged over the engine compartment 10 with footwells at either end. The tilting cab has an engine air intake pipe (37 Fig 3) through the cab from the roof to the floor with a push fit air filter coupling on its downstream end. <IMAGE>

Description

Title: Vehicle Accommodation DESCRIPTION The present invention relates to vehicle accommodation and particularly to a crew cab for a commercial vehicle, especially a light commercial vehicle.

Basic accommodation in commercial vehicles usually, comprises a drivers seat and one passenger seat, but there is an increasing demand for additional crew seating. The difficulty is providing this without reducing payload space unnecessarily.

A typical cab construction provides front passenger footwells in front of the front wheel arches with the seat squabs generally in a line between and over the wheel arches. The space between and under the seats may also accommodate other operational parts of the vehicle such as engine, transmission, air filters etc. Indeed, for one particular vehicle for which we are concerned with providing a crew cab, the engine sits high in the chassis and is located between the front seats but generally below squab height so that the cab floor effectively slopes upwardly from the footwells and then rearwardly over the engine and other associated parts - also providing room for wheel arches projections as required. In fact the engine extends somewhat rearwardly of the rear of the standard two man cab. One such vehicle is the IFA Multicar 25.

Such an arrangement gives rise to difficulties in providing a space efficient crew cab because the footwells, which for minimum space requirements would utilise the space under the front seats, are already occupied by the afore-mentioned vehicle parts. This necessitates positioning the seats further to the rear and so requires a larger crew cab and consequential reduction in payload spaces.

The present invention aims to provide a crew cab which avoids the aforementioned problem.

Accordingly, I propose a vehicle cab accommodating two rows of seating in which the seating are arranged back to back.

By rows I mean seats placed one behind the other, providing side by side seating in each row either in individual seats spaced apart sideways or on bench seating.

As applied to my preferred vehicle the seating comprises a first row forwardly facing and a second row rearwardly facing.

By having the second row facing rearwardly, the area underneath the first row of seats and extending rearwardly thereof also falls beneath the seat squabs of the second row of seats so that the footwells therefor take up the area immediately aft of this occupied space. This results in a particularly compact construction of crew cab whilst providing completely adequate crew accommodation.

With the proposed arrangement, the two rows of seats can be at substantially the same level so avoiding an undesirable increase in roof cab height.

I prefer to have the crew cab as a tilt cab, pivotting forwardly by 45 degrees or so to allow ease of access to the engine and other serviceable vehicle parts beneath the cab floor.

A further feature of my crew cab conversion is the provision of an internal air stack, by which I mean that the air intake to the engine is by way of an inlet pipe which passes through the cab. Accordingly another aspect of the invention provides a cab for a vehicle in which the air stack to the engine passes through the cab. The inlet is sealed with respect to the cab itself with an inlet opening above roof height and connection to the air filter being under the cab floor by way of a rubber connection which is releasable. This allows for tilting of the modified crew cab without the need to reposition the air inlet filter which is positioned below the cab floor under one of the rear seats. The alternative would be to re-route the air stack externally of the crew cab.

The present invention will now be described further, by way of example only, with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which: Figure 1 is a side view of a commercial vehicle showing seat location for 2 man and 4 man accommodation utilising a conventional seating configuration; Figure 2 is a partially broken away side view of a crew cab according to the present invention showing its compact construction; and Figure 3 is a side view of a crew cab partially broken away to show detail of the internal air stack.

Referring firstly to Figure 1 of the drawings, there is shown a side view of a 3 1/2 ton truck illustrating a cab 1 for two persons; the driver and a passenger, with the side broken away to show seating location as at 3, with the seat squab 5 on a raised floor part 7 of the cab and showing a footwell at 9.

The engine and other vehicle parts are accommodated in the area 10 shown hatched - generally below the cab floor and extending rearwardly of the back wall 11 of the cab. The air inlet pipe 13 to an air filter 15 is secured to the rear wall of the cab. Shown at 17 is the space which a second row of seats would occupy if positioned to face forwardly with the footwell space 19 located immediately aft of the area 10. It will be seen that the extent of the crew cab shown by dotted outline 21 is considerable giving a reduced length of chassis 23 for any payload.

Referring now to Figure 2 we illustrate the same vehicle but provided with a crew cab accommodating two rows of seats 23, 25 in which the first row 23 is forward facing, but the second row is rearward facing and with the seats mounted closely positioned back to back. By this means the crew càb floor shown at 27 extends over the engine and associated equipment occupying the area 10 as in Figure 1 and both the front and rear seat squabs are disposed above this. This means that the footwells for the rearwardly facing row of seats occupies the space 29 immediately rearwardly of the area 10. As a consequence, the length of the crew cab is kept to a minimum and the payload length maximised as will be apparent by comparison of Figures 1 and 2.

For a right hand drive vehicle we prefer to provide two doors 31, 33 to the near side which are hinged forwardly and rearwardly respectively. On the off side we prefer to provide only a drivers door for safety, although a door may be provided and the arrangement of doors is preferably reversed for a L H drive vehicle.

The original arrangement of the tip-up cab - to hinge upwardly about a forward pivot point is easily retained for our proposed crew cab. We provide a spring to assist tilting of the cab.

Illustrated generally schematically in Figure 3 is the internal air stack. With the air filter 15 located beneath the floor 27 of the crew cab to provide a passageway 35 leading from beneath the floor into the interior of the crew cab and connecting with an inlet pipe 37 at least part of which is formed by the wall of the crew cab - with the remainder being formed integrally therewith - say by welding. The inlet pipe passes through the roof 39 of the crew cab to which the inlet cover 41 is fitted. Alternatively it may comprise a separate pipe extending between floor and roof parts.

The passageway 35 has a tubular projection 43 on which is received a tubular rubber connection 4D making a connectionm with the tubular inlet 47 to the air filter 15. This rubber connection is a push fit onto the inlet and so is releasable to allow for tilting of the crew cab.

Providing the air inlet internally is advantageous in avoiding possible damage thereto when outside, but more especially, in the case of provision of a crew cab avoids the need to reposition the air filter and/or extend the inlet pipe to fit a repositioned external air stack, thus again reducing load space.

Claims (9)

1. A vehicle cab accommodating two rows of seating in which the rows of seating are arranged back to back, with a first row forwardly facing and a second row rearwardly facing.

2. A vehicle cab as claimed in claim 1 in which the footwells for the rearwardly facing row of seating are located immediately rearwardly of occupied space underneath and extending rearwardly of the first row of seats and falling beneath the seat squabs of the second row of seats.

3. A vehicle cab as claimed in claim 1 or 2, wherein the two rows of seats are at substantially the same level.

4. A vehicle cab as claimed in claims 1,2 or 3 wherein the cab pivots forwardly.

5. A vehicle cab as claimed in any previous claim, wherein the air intake to the engine is by way of an inlet pipe which passes through the cab.

6. A vehicle cab as claimed in claim 5, wherein said inlet is sealed with respect to the cab itself with an inlet opening above roof height and connection to the air filter being under the cab floor by way of a rubber connection which is releasable.

7. A vehicle when provided with a cab according to any one of the preceding claims.

8. A vehicle cab substantially as hereinbefore described with reference to and as illustrated by the accompanying drawings.

9. A vehicle having a cab substantially as hereinbefore described with reference to and as illustrated in the accompanying drawings.