a) You can fit rear, front facing seats in the back of a 90 which will allow a child seat to be fitted? I spoke with Exmoor Trim this afternoon and was told their seats are not suitable as the fold up in the side - understandable. Does anyone do permanent fixture one?
b) If anyone does sell them - and someone has used them -do they seem secure enough?
c) Is it best to put the car seat in the front passenger seat, using the normal 3 point inertia belt? I'm a little uneasy about this mainly due to my 18 month being in the front when he'd previously been in the back of a Golf.
You can fix the seats by bolting them to the floor. The back and side leg (both of which fold up) can be made stay out, they have little clamps which would need a little extra to ensure they stayed secure.
I got mine from Paddocks, they do seem to be strong enough.
I also bought some new 3 point inertia belts and they were easy to fit in the back, I did add a bit of big angle iron to reinforce the top point and floor mount.
Too many journeys with the kids sat on the side seats and me having to brake sharp made me fit the rear forward facing seats. You lose a bit of space in the back as they take up some room when they are folded up. When they are being used they take up a lot of room. Kids love them as they are high up and they can see out of the front window and the sides. Some adults have complained about being too high up. Just take them over a few speed bumps, that shuts them up.
Any chance of a couple of pictures of your installation?
I can't find the seats on Paddocks site though - how long ago did you fit them?
When I was spoken to by Exmoor they said their seats were not for child seats due to way the side bar just rests on the floor....I'm wondering if only bolting them is sufficent. Also concerned that the back of the seat could fold in on the baby seat under a shunt.
Be really sure that you know what you are doing with aftermarket seats, just bolting them through the floor without attaching them to something that wont let go in an accident. Same goes for seatbelts and their anchorage points. The forces on seat mountings is very high in an accident - I used to have some figures somewhere about the weight of a 10kg in a 50kph full stop accident, but for the life of me I cant find them now. It was something in the region of half a tonne in force. No doubt someone can work that one out. I know it convinced me that I would never allow anyone to carry a child in my car in their arms or on their lap.
Me too. Could you mail some to me as well please. I'm in the same situation
2 kids + only benchs in the back = unhappy wife. Dad gets to motor on his own in peace and quiet errrrrrrrrr hang on what am i talking about?? Seriously a few ideas would be good. Thanks
If I was going to carry my child in a Land Rover it would be
a) because there was no other option b) in a centre seat position only
Side impact, roll-over and offset head-on protection is virtually non-existent in 90. There is no major structure outside the main rails, apart from the occasional outrigger. The oft-spouted nonsense about them being the safest vehicle on the road is exactly that.
Precious cargo and all that...
If you do decide to do this, I would put the child in the front, obviously rear-facing. I would also ask your Land Rover dealer if they sell / recommend a seat that has been tested in that position. You may also find that the seat belt is too short to wrap around the seat - the seat we had in the Discovery was only just long enough. I had to make a judgement between putting Charlotte in the centre with only a lap belt or at the side with a full 3 point belt. In the end I decided that the best position was in a Volvo...
The main reason we are switching from the Golf is due the type of roads my wife now spends 80% of her time on - namely country 'B' roads/Single lane with passing points. She has nearly been wiped out twice now but idiots going too fast for the road and conditions. Being unable to see 'over' the hedges and therefor to see what's coming up is the one of the reason we felt a 90 would do the job.
My son is 19months old so his seat is forward facing. I've tried it in the 90 and it fits as well as the Golf with no movement. Have'nt tried the middle seat yet - that will be done tomorrow.
If we're still not convinced then I can see a 110 coming up...
I can't remember how old Charlotte was when she went forward facing. From memory it's recommended that they weigh 15kg(?) before going forward facing - something to do with development of neck muscles. Babies have disproportionately large heads which can snap the spine in a heavy collision. My only observation is that the lack of any crumple zone will make this effect even worse. But if your lad is anything like Charlotte he'd have been playing merry hell about looking "the wrong way" from about a year old!
I hate to say it, but for this job I'd have chosen a Freelander or even a Mitsubishi / Toyota / Nissan for preference. Much better comfort and crash performance whilst retaining the high driving position.
Fair to say though that not having a crash in a 90 is infinitely better than having one in a Golf.
However, if it is the report I read previously (and it may not be) the survey showed that in fatal accidents the survivors were most likely to be driving a Defender.
That has since been interpreted as meaning that Defenders are the safest vehicles on the road. What it actually shows is that
a) accidents are more likely to be fatal if the other car is a Defender b) Defenders are more likely to have accidents in the first place
This is despite the likely lower average speed and lower annual mileage of many Defenders over cars. It also neatly excludes collisions not involving other vehicles (e.g. with trees, walls and other items that cannot donate a crumple zone).
YMMV, but if I had the choice of car to drive into an accident (of any type, but especially involving leaving the road, hitting a solid object or other high vehicle) I'd put Defender at the very bottom of my list.
No crumple zone No airbag No ABS No roll cage No side protection High centre of gravity Masses of hard structures in cab No belt pre-tensioners
Discos and Range Rovers can be had with airbags, ABS and other such. Not sure about belt tensioners. Roll-over protection is better since the roof is not designed to be unbolted. But I don't know exactly what is in the roof of a Disco / Range Rover. I don't know what side-impact protection exists in the various Disco model years - not much in the 200-300 series I think.
Freelander and current RaRo / Disco have structural strength in the bodyshell. Freelander / Range Rover has no separate chassis at all - it is a monocoque with crumple zones and intrinsic strength in the sills, including side-protection in the doors.
RaRo Sport and Disco 3 have a chassis AND a structural bodyshell. I'm not sure how far forward the chassis goes, but I'd be very surprised if there isn't a substantial forward crumple zone.
All the current models bar Defender have ABS, aribags and various traction controlly stuff.
Sounds like it's not the same report, then. This one examines the stats for two-car injury accidents 1996-2000, and scores cars according to the statistical likelihood of death or serious injury from being in said vehicle, standardised. Defender/Disco scores 1 (1% likelihood of death/serious injury in 2-car injury accident), Volvo 900 3 (3%, etc), Fourtrak 4, Suzuki SJ 6, and so on.
It does not take into account the likelihood of the vehicle to have an accident in the first place (although I would have thought Def/Disco were quite low down on the list anyway, being comparatively slow and unattractive to the boy racer brigade).
I take your point there. Other people's crumple zones are so comforting.
YMMV too - there is a stack of anecdotal evidence of people walking away from accidents in Land Rovers (trees, walls, 60ft drops into rivers, as well as other cars) when in other vehicles they might have been much worse. Yes, might - it's all a bit imponderable at this level. You have to make your own choices. I am perfectly happy carrying my own or other people's kids in my Disco, or the Series.
Have a look at this little bit of local news:
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4WD tractor broken in two, Discovery with damage to front end, but not as serious as you'd think from the state of the tractor. Happily, all occupants were OK. I'm not sure a normal car would have stood up as well.
I still can't read it for some reason - could be my PDF reader is buggered. If the survey only looks at injury accidents it is already skewed - it could (and I don't know any more than anyone else does) be that more minor shunts in Defenders result in a whiplash injury and thus improve the figures for that vehicle. Lies, damn lies etc!
The high driving position and higher weight of a Land Rover is a helpful factor (to the occupants) in a collision with a soft subject. The reduced speeds also help - I felt much safer driving the Discovery than I do the Volvo, but maybe that made me MORE vulnerable.
On or around Fri, 16 Sep 2005 08:58:37 GMT, "Roger & Lorraine Martin" enlightened us thusly:
seat belt mountings are 7/16" UNF nuts welded to suitable reinforcing plates and same welded or otherwise fixed under the floor. I'd tend to the view that for ordinary floors you want a minimum of 100x100x3 mm for your reinforcing, presuming space to fit it. In the event of a shunt, that plate has to pull through the floor for the belt to fail.
somewhere, I have specs for the forces that seatbelts/mounts should test to, which are quite high as you say, and are also different depending on what kind of belt or what position on the belt.
Oh, and WRT young children - holding onto the young child, with the adult belted, is about the best you can do if no better solution like a proper child seat is available. Much better than belting around the adult and child - the adult's weight against the belt rather tends to try and cut the child in half.
the "correct" solution isn't always possible. But you can try for least-damage.
On or around 16 Sep 2005 04:27:49 -0700, snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.co.uk enlightened us thusly:
I've fitted child seats to a vehicle with fixed lap belts only - provided you get the belt good and tight, and well-positioned on the seat, it'll hold it in OK. Presumably the inertia-reel type lap belts work equally effectively, but that's not what you get in the middle of a 90.
On or around Fri, 16 Sep 2005 17:02:13 +0100, Tim Hobbs enlightened us thusly:
I've yet to see statistics used to prove that balck is white, but I'm sure it could be done.
besides, the point at issue is whether your kids are safe inside the defender, not whether when someone else runs into you *they* get hurt. How many accidents are *caused* by defenders? How many are other people driving into them?
You could of course try not driving off the road into a tree in the first place...
On or around 16 Sep 2005 09:17:30 -0700, snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.co.uk enlightened us thusly:
all them hard things in the cab deter you from driving in such a way as to hit stuff in the first place...
There were a series of adverts which gave the strong implication that if you drove a volvo it didn't matter what you drove into or what drove into you,
*you'd* be safe, thanks to 27 air bags, and guess what, a rigid structure...(albeit with crumple zones on the edges).
personally, "drive a volvo into anything and you won't get hurt" didn't really do it for me as a message. I'd prefer "don't drive into things".
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