What to keep after removing the seats?

Hi everyone,

I have just stripped the back of my defender to bare metal.

Now I'm wondering two things:

1. The seat belt attachments had been partly attached to the chassis. Do I need to put the screws back in to maintain the connection between body and chassis or can i just close the wholes?

2. How do I actually seal those wholes without putting in screws? ;-) Any easy ways without welding on metal sheets? And how do I conserve them? Due to the direct connection of steel and aluminium there is some oxidation around the wholes.

Thanks for your advice!

Kitai said:

Hi everyone,

I have just stripped the back of my defender to bare metal.

Now I'm wondering two things:

1. The seat belt attachments had been partly attached to the chassis. Do I need to put the screws back in to maintain the connection between body and chassis or can i just close the wholes?

2. How do I actually seal those wholes without putting in screws? ;-) Any easy ways without welding on metal sheets? And how do I conserve them? Due to the direct connection of steel and aluminium there is some oxidation around the wholes.

Thanks for your advice!

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On my 90 I had side seats which I removed (rather than forward facing ones so a slightly different arrangement from yours). However on my one there are no bolts on the floor where you have holes so I cant see a need to fit bolts if they were not there on earlier models. To cover the holes you could try bonding (gluing) some aluminium disks on to the floor, no steel / aluminium corrosion issues and thin enough not to get in the way.

Mine is a 110, so I had both the forward-facing seats and the four side seats. Only the forward-facing ones were attached to the chassis. So it might be different here.