Defender 90 Rear Seats

Hi I'm James, New to the site not to land rovers.

I tough I would share a project I have been working on for the last couple of months now.

I have a defender 90 and two young lads, with the misses as well it impossible to get everyone in safely, Being a tight A** I didn't want to stump up £1500 for genuine land rover forward facing seats.

Having a got some inspiration from the web I got myself some Discovery 2 third row seats (£50)
Having a CAD back ground I then designed a system to install them to the defender.
I wanted the seats to fold up as close to the sides as possible and leave as much of the load space free when not in use.

The solution I came up with works well and the main steel plate can be fully removed when not in use leaving the load space free. (still working on a solution to store the plate when not in use) the plate then drops onto some locating screws and is the bolted in place with 4 x M8 Bolts (will up grade to thumb screws)
each seat can the be folded out and locked into place using the original locking mechanism. To insure the seats didn't damage the wheel arched I added some stiffening brackets to the inner arch with captive nuts. For the seat belts I again used Discovery 2 third row seat belts (£35) and the Exmore trim seatbelt brackets (£60)

Let me know what you think, and any ideas for improvements are welcome

Image gallery of the seats.

Nice.
Where have the seatbelts mounted?

Flossie said:

Nice.
Where have the seatbelts mounted?

Click to expand...

Bought the bracket to mount the seatbelt pretensioner from Exmore trim and the the tub was a TD5 tub so I already had the hole for the seatbelt anchor
I think you can also by the bracket for the seatbelt anchor I think it mounts back to the rear cross member or chassis.

Flossie said:

Nice.
Where have the seatbelts mounted?

Click to expand...

I have added a picture to the album in the main post that shows the bracket.

The queries on 2nd row seats in 90's come up quite often so this thread will be useful for sure. It's the top belt mounting that people struggle with having van bodied older models.
I've got a 110sw so it's just what I've picked up from reading posts.

Brackets I used = Seat Belt Rear Top Mounting Bracket | Exmoor Trim

I had a similar dilemma too.
My solution was to cut and shut two pairs of minibus seats to have a system that mounts to UNWIN rails mounted to the tub/chassis mounting points plus a few strengtheners.
As it is a soft top, there are no high level mounting points so the new seats have integral 3 point inertia belts.
The added bonus of it being on UNWIN rails is that the whole unit can be removed in 2 minutes and the seats themselves can have squabs removed for extra load space and also secured in fwd or rear facing directions.

yalan said:

I had a similar dilemma too.
My solution was to cut and shut two pairs of minibus seats to have a system that mounts to UNWIN rails mounted to the tub/chassis mounting points plus a few strengtheners.
As it is a soft top, there are no high level mounting points so the new seats have integral 3 point inertia belts.
The added bonus of it being on UNWIN rails is that the whole unit can be removed in 2 minutes and the seats themselves can have squabs removed for extra load space and also secured in fwd or rear facing directions.

View attachment 252927
View attachment 252929

Click to expand...

Really like the use of the UNWIN Rail might revise my design to utilise them.

Wingnut33 said:

Hi I'm James, New to the site not to land rovers.

I tough I would share a project I have been working on for the last couple of months now.

I have a defender 90 and two young lads, with the misses as well it impossible to get everyone in safely, Being a tight A** I didn't want to stump up £1500 for genuine land rover forward facing seats.

Having a got some inspiration from the web I got myself some Discovery 2 third row seats (£50)
Having a CAD back ground I then designed a system to install them to the defender.
I wanted the seats to fold up as close to the sides as possible and leave as much of the load space free when not in use.

The solution I came up with works well and the main steel plate can be fully removed when not in use leaving the load space free. (still working on a solution to store the plate when not in use) the plate then drops onto some locating screws and is the bolted in place with 4 x M8 Bolts (will up grade to thumb screws)
each seat can the be folded out and locked into place using the original locking mechanism. To insure the seats didn't damage the wheel arched I added some stiffening brackets to the inner arch with captive nuts. For the seat belts I again used Discovery 2 third row seat belts (£35) and the Exmore trim seatbelt brackets (£60)

Let me know what you think, and any ideas for improvements are welcome

Image gallery of the seats.

Click to expand...

Have you got anymore pictures of the brackets and the seat all folded out? In the process of looking at seats for my own. Thanks

The problem with retrofitting forward-facing seats to an older Defender is always that the seats end up very close together, so that it's difficult or even impossible to get out without folding up one seat. As well the the ergonomics of doing this in general use, this arrangement is quite dangerous as in a crash, any seat from which you can't rapidly get out of the vehicle has the potential to be a deathtrap.

Admittedly less of an issue on the softtop above (assuming you can open the side canvas and get out that way) but rear-facing is a better idea for this kind of seat. You can then easily jump in and out through the back door.