Morris Minor Owners Club

Emma has always fancied a car with bench seats - and as always its my job to 'sort it' if possible !

Whilst this is easy and common with column shift vehicles, I wondered if there are any legal issues anyone can identify with regard to doing this to SHY. I know some older Zephyr / Zodiacs had floor shift and benches during changeover period.

Technically, moving the handbrake and fabricating a linkage will be the most fiddly part I know, but some parts from a mercedes could be 'adjusted' to fulfil this. Adjustable seating could be retained by using a single drivers seat and a "1 1/2" seat from a small commercial vehicle... or a Daimler limo if I can find one !
An original minor seatbelt could be used for the cenre seat, as it is floor mounted (and we'll have spares once the inertia's go in the car)... equally a van lap belt perhaps.

Its mainly the legal side that bothers me..... will the constabulary pull us for having three people in the front of a moggie ?

You might be doing well to get three in the front of the morrie. Just the other day the dog decided that between the two front seats was a great place to sit - he didn't stay their long whne it came to finding the seatbelts.

In Australia they had bench seats in their utes from the factory. I have a pic some where.

The rear seat from an All Aggro, sorry, Allegro will fit, apparently, but the frame will need some modification, I would think.

Shy,
You can see one here:
http://members.iinet.net.au/%7Ekustomb/ ... terior.jpg
It's been retrimmed but you can see the handbrake lever is in the original spot.

Robin`s pickup used to have a bench seat (Allegro) and we often travelled 3 up, but it was cramped!

The main legal requirement is insurance. On the insurance document it always says how many seats are in the vehicle.

John