One and a half new seats

Katy's passenger sear wasn't very nice as it was welded solid in one position which meant that it was not possible to fit a headrest.which I wanted to do as a safety and comfort feature.

So when one of the guys in the South Wales Land Rover Club said that he had replaced his Defender seats because the Drivers seat was broken I popped him a quick message asking whether he had plans for the rest of the kit.

About 30 minutes later I was the proud owner of some replacement seats (thanks Peter).

That night I swapped the seat bases because we were heading off for Scarborough and left it at that.

Tonight was the start of the rest so here is a quick run thought of how easy it is to upgrade Land Rover Seats.

1.st you can see the broken seat with no back release handle and with the new seat base in place as I left it before tonight.

Quickly remove the bases for better access and remove the 4 bolts at each corner (you can see 2 here at the far left and right).

Then I hit a snag - I was not able to get the rear bolt near the centre because of the broken seat back so I removed the seat from the bars by removing the 6 bolts at that point (I left the others in place to stop everything moving whilst I was doing that which is why they are visible in this picture). 

Got the last bolt and out came the seat.

Then putting the new one in place I hit another snag. The different design meant it was not possible to get a socket in from above (you would need really slimline ones) so I improvised this arrangement of spanners to finish tightening them up. 

And here it is looking much  nicer and a lot safer as it has a proper headrest.

Including snags it took about an hour. If things had been easier I could probably have done it in half that time

Now the good news is that Rhian reckons she can unpick the seam on the drivers seat and repair the foam that's moved out of place. So I should be able to fit the matching pair of seats in due course