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Fitting Surfboards into a Metris

7K views 6 replies 4 participants last post by  Hedge 
#1 ·
Greetings. I'm a recovering VW Westfalia owner who is super happy to have purchased a metris to make it my surf van. No more constant worry about a lack of airbags and the potential for the tranny to drop out of the car. This forum was super helpful in making that purchase so I wanted to post up what I wasn't able to find during my research.

After much agony over the lack of a rear rock and roll bed, I've opted to go for the 2-2-2 configuration of seats creating a "hallway" on the right side to store my surfboards and leaving the seats in permanently for the family use. I've just purchased a spare 2 row seat off ebay from a conversion company and i'm selling my big 3 row seat.

If the whole family comes, the longboards go on the roof racks and the shorter boards go in the hallway. But most of the time its just me and I wanted a van that I could lock my longboard in for surfing before work.

Here is what I've leaned from trying to stuff my boards in the van so far. The rear seat is HEAVY but I was able to get it out of the van the rear way by myself with a little struggle and a good hand truck to move it.

Learnings:

1) By far the easiest option for long boards is the Seat Rack. seat-rack dhot com If you put this in the middle headrests of the 2nd and 3rd row, it works great for one board. I've also done this on the right rear of the back row to the front passenger seat. The passenger seat option works best (and it left 4 open seats in the back as well). You can see your mirrors and also the rear view mirror when you use the right row.

2) With the third row removed you can fit a longboard on either the right or left side of the front passenger seat. See pics below. The right side seemed to work better and loss of visibility was not bad at all. This is the setup I'm going to use when the log comes along for the ride. It also holds the board nicely in case of an accident.

3) I can easily fit 3 boards on the hallway. They would still fit if the third row contained a 2 person seat as well. I'm loving that left sliding door as it means the kids can pile in the left side and not crawl over the boards each time.

4) My 7'2" mini mal fits "under" the second row (see pic 3266). The board bag is a 7'4" bag. It fit nicely under the seat.

5) Shortboards fit easily when inserted diagonally behind the second row. You could stack a gaggle of them this way.

6) My van is an early 2016 so it has carpet floors. Someone needs to post a thread on how to install that cool looking fake wood vinyl flooring pretty quickly! I need to get the carpet out quick!

I'm loving this van as the new replacement for my Westy. Even the Westy owners are interested in it and the Sprinter guys keep calling it a Baby Sprinter. I'm good with both.
 

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#2 ·
Here is an update on the surfboard space...
I sold the old third row to a sprinter guy in my neighborhood who is going to retrofit it into his cargo van.

I bought a 2 person bench from a van upfitter off eBay. $450 for the seat and $200 for residential shippping of a palet.

Now I have the 2-2-2 configuration and it works great.

For the floors I really didn't feel like pulling all the carpet out. That just looks like a lot of work. I opted instead to buy rubber Lloyd mats that were custom fit off of carid.com for around $200
They fit great except that a small piece was uncovered between the second and third row. I purchased an extra third row for $39 and then cut it up to fit the gap. I used the leftovers to make a small mat for between the two front seats. Now the van is ready to swlllow kid portions of sand and mud.

Three boards fit very nicely now.

In the pictures are three boards. 8', 6'6", and 6'. More boards could easily be stacked on top as well.

I'm a happy camper now!
 
#4 ·
Thanks for your in-depth explanation! If you removed the back row and had only a two seat option for the bench, how many longboards could you fit inside? My family rides mostly 9’0” to 9’6”’s. There are four of us. Is it possible to get four longboards in down the side if you removed the fins?
 
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