1959 Land-Rover Series 2. Seating, and distractions…

No hurry, they have been there for 4 years already...
James.

BTW 3 seats.

Finally unpacked all the camping stuff the other day, and cleared all the detritus out of the back. Those of you with long memories will recall that in the summer of ’21 I fitted some Unwin tracks to the load bed floor:



I then modified what was already a ridiculously heavy and overly complicated subframe for a pair of minibus seats into an even heavier lump that just about put them in a position where my then 12 year old and his mates had somewhere to sit. From this:



To this:



Which allowed this:





All was fine for quite some time. Sadly, it seems 12 year olds keep growing and, now he’s nearly 16, there’s not really enough room for two almost adult sized people to fit there any more. Furthermore, my mate Spencer suffered the indignity of having to travel in the back a while ago and he’s still not stopped moaning about it. Moving the two seats in the runners, or getting them out and back in again, was a major PITA too. They were just too heavy and awkward. As I had wrestled them out before the Scotland road trip, and had moved the sideways facing bench to the front, I had to do something about them because just slinging them back in wasn’t an option anymore. 

There really isn’t enough room to put two seats side by side in the centre. They will just about fit, physically, but then there’s no room at all to squeeze past the spare wheel on the right, and you’d need to be both skinny and flexible to get through the narrow gap on the left. Even if you could get around and into the seats, they’d be too close to each other for two adults to be comfortable (which was why the original frame had them staggered slightly I imagine). It would also have meant a complete redesign of the subframe, which I just couldn’t be bothered with if I’m honest. 

A bit of trial and error and packing stuff up with odd bits of wood determined that if, instead of the mounts being horizontal to the floor, the rears were 2” lower than the fronts, and the whole lot was then lowered another 2”, then the angle of the seat back would be more relaxed, and headroom would be markedly improved. So I lopped off all the extraneous bits on the left hand side that I’d cobbled together lovingly created, and sliced the legs back at an appropriate angle to knock two inches off the front height and four from the rear. I then spiralled the mental drain trying to decide whether it was going to be possible to shift the assembly further right, before coming to the conclusion that it would mean pretty much remaking the whole thing again, that the access to the mounting levers would be awkward, the weight of the assembly would be offset, meaning getting it in and out would remain a pain, and that a more central position actually made sense for a single seat anyway. So I made some new feet and welded them in place. I took great pains to try and eliminate any distortion from the welding too, as it was clear from my initial effort that there’s actually very little tolerance with the tracks if things aren’t square and level, and things get bound up really easily if they’re not. Slapped some paint on it:





And got a seat fitted:





The lad reports that it is much improved. There’s room for me to sit comfortably on it, so hopefully Spencer will stop whining the next time he has to travel in it too. If not, he can walk. 🤣

The rest of today was spent with the lad getting his moped ready for the road. We put a new chain on it, then made a pair of brackets to mount two .30 cal ammo boxes on it as panniers. They actually look pretty cool, and he’s as pleased as punch with them. Still a few bits left to do on it; oil change, some fork gaiters, the obligatory L-plates, and an MoT. His CBT is in 3 weeks, so we need to get that sorted next. 

On the back of his moped. 🤣