sako243 wrote:

The standard Defender seat box is built up of rivetted / glued aluminium panels and retains most of its strength due to the boxes. You can get away with a flat floor on the driver and passenger side but the bit in-between needs to stay raised for the transfer box to clear. (Basically continuing the gearbox tunnel).

I welded up my own seat box out of some angle iron to accommodate Range Rover seats. I'd question why you'd want a suspension seat - normally they're on vehicles that don't have cab / axle suspension for technical reasons.

nitram17 wrote:

the normal inner seat base runner appears to impinge on the gearbox tunnel do you have any pics of your set up?

It's all slightly irrelevant because I have seats out of a 2004 L322 (any other L322 would also work, mine just happen to be from a 2004). They are slightly narrower seat runners than a Defender but I've also mounted them slightly further inboard to give more room to the outside edge.

Actually looking through old photos I might have been mistaken on the requirements for transfer box clearance, I've got a hydraulic PTO pump on the back of my transfer box and that fouls. Here's the only photo I've got that shows the seat-box structure well, it was all a bit of a rushed job (gearbox needed to be swapped over because of chipping a tooth on 5th (suspected), then I found the seat-box was collapsing (probably due to the abuse off-road with all the extra weight of the L322 seats).

The plan at the time since the pump, transfer-box and gearbox were out was why not just rip the engine out and shove the 1UZ-FE that's sitting in the workshop waiting to go in into the vehicle. Then last minute Dad decided he didn't want to take his Shogun to Scotland as we were towing. So in 3 days in -5°C I swapped the gearbox, re-installed the transfer box and hydraulic pump, fabricated a new seat box, installed a new exhaust, packed and set off to Scotland on the fourth morning. I still haven't got around to painting the seat-box or installing the V8.

All of that stuff is 20x20 angle (maybe 3mm), the long one along the second row joint is drilled through the existing holes and bolted in, the other bits pick up all the existing bolt holes. I was going to extend the storage under the floors but ran out of time. The seat-box is flat front to rear to accommodate the Range Rover seats, I could have dropped the seat areas down but you'd struggle for height (without subsequently dropping the floor) for my 019 batteries under the passenger seat. I didn't want to drop it any lower initially because it sits flush with the bottom of the sills currently. From this I just bent some 1mm sheet for the bottoms, the sides with the doors are open to allow access from the side.

Still needs refinement but it's functional and time...

Framework:

Click image to enlarge

Driver seat installed but sorting out a compressor (last minute again)

Click image to enlarge Ed
82 Hotspur Sandringham 6x6
95 Defender 110 300Tdi

MarkBrown wrote:

I doubt that it will help your problem, or is the solution you want but I fitted seats out of a Mercedes slk into my 110. They're mechanical and have a built in sprung base, although I've never felt them work on the road, it's pretty effective on rough tracks.

nitram17 wrote:

Hi I'm nearly getting to the point of selling my defender due to back problems...my last option is trying to see if i could fit air or mechanical suspension seat into the defender. My question is has anyone attempted this before?im not sure if it would be possible to modify the seatbox so the floor is flat with the drivers floor to allow room for he suspension seat whilst keeping the rigidity and strength of the original..im not quite sure whether the gearbox gets in the way?

Anybody know of any car fabricators that might do that sort of work?