Morris Minor Owners Club

Looking for some advice regarding reclining seats, years ago, 3-4 years BI (Before Internet) I believe I read somewhere about the reclining seats in a minor 1000 being based on the same recline mechanisms used by the Austin Maxi. Having scrapped a maxi 20+ yrs ago i kept the front seats complete with the reclining mechanisms.

The maxi seats have the same short chrome lever as on the minor 1000 seats. Can anyone shed any light on this distant memory of mine, going to strip down the maxi seats over the Christmas holidays and compare the seat frames. I know the. Minor seats are much narrower but is there merit in using the maxi seats as a starting point for recliners?

I've not had a Minor saloon for years but I can't remember them having reclining seats, or indeed a chrome lever.
I've fitted recliners in a van, as they were fixed seats as standard. However if the Maxi seats are wider there may be issues with the handbrake clearance.

Reclining seats was a factory option on later Minor 1000s. I did own a car once with them fitted but they are very rare. I am not sure how easy it would be to modify a standard Minor seat quite honestly but anything is possible I suppose. It would probably be easier to simply fit the seats from another car?

I remember braking heavily in my Maxi and pushing into the seat back . It snapped and I shot into the back of the car . Fortunately I had stopped and not hit anything .