Nick's Land Rover - Series III Rebuild

This seems to be a very topical issue at the moment, given the European regulations changing this month, outlawing the use of sideways facing seatbelts for children under 12 years/135cm height and bringing in other new requirements for childrens’ seating. There are a lot of discussions on the Land Rover forums about this, so here’s what I have done. It complies with all the new regs and is very practical.

I used Exmoor Trim forward facing fold-up seats, aka Trakkers. As you saw in the previous update, these are mounted, in my case, at the very back of my 109, but they can be mounted in 88s, 90s, the back of 109 and 110 Station Wagons or anywhere in the back of 109 and 110 Hard Tops (you could comfortably fit four in a 109/110 Hard Top).

The photos show the mounting bracket that attaches to the wheel box. The bracket sits in direct contact with the wheel box, and its integral hinge pins overhang the floor. The hinge pins face rearward, preventing the seat sliding forwards in use. At the back of the bracket, you can see a tab (with a small unused bolt hole) also overhanging the floor. This tab prevents the seat sliding aft and off the hinge pins when in use. With the seat folded up, the seat is no longer obstructed by the tab, enabling it to be slid to the aft to remove it in seconds. The photo also shows how the edge of the tool box lid (rear of left wheel box, where fitted) had to be modified. The lid had to be moved outboard to be useable with the bracket fitted. A furniature lock from a DIY store allows the lid to be locked. To retain a reasonable size opening, the hinged side of the apperture was also cut back and extended outboard as far as possible, though this does mean that the lid cannot be opened more than 80 degrees, requiring a holding open catch on the body capping to prevent it closing unwantedly.
Some forum posters are concerned that the adjacent seats are too close together, preventing access between them from the rear door. When I had previously fitted these seats, prior to the rebuild project, I had found this a bit of a problem (the seats were permanently deployed with child seats on them). As a solution, I moved them both 5″ outboard by making a 1″ packer to sit between the bracket and wheel box, allowing the seat base frame to sit above the wheel box. This still allowed the seat to be folded out of the way as before. It also had the benefit of further improving the seatbelt geometry such that even I (as a tall man) fitted the belts perfectly. The only down side is the loss of 1″ headroom for tall passengers and the minor intrusion of the wheel box into the leg room, but both proved of little consequence.

The seatbelts are bolted, like the seat brackes, throught the wheel box with spreader plates below. The buckle stalk anchors are by the rear door and also have spreaders underneath the floor and tub cross-member. I used Securon inertia reel belts, also from Exmoor Trim. These come with an assortment of brackets and spreader plates, aswell as all the required fixings. Unlike Exmoor Trim, I have used anchor points that place the shoulder bolt above the gutter rail in order to have the harness’ shoulder strap lie correctly over the shoulder, rather than across the armpit like Exmoor’s setup. This was achieved by using the lower anchor points from SIII front seatbelts upside-down.

FAQ, Interior

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