Seats & Seat Belt Mounts

The kit comes supplied with a pair of very nice Recaro seats but they did not give the appearance that I was looking for so I sold them on ebay, and bought a pair of Cobra seats which are more in keeping with the look I want.

The next problem was that the 2B plus, for some reason, does not come with centre anchorage points for the seat belts. There are various suggestions on the Robin Hood Owners Club forums on how to get over this problem but none that seemed to suit my build so, having visited our local VOSA Centre and discussed it with ‘No Pass Andy’ I decided on the following.

My solution was to purchase a 3 metre length of mild steel, 100mm x 5mm and weld it to the chassis. My welding skills would not stand up to the scrutiny of the examiner and where my safety and that of my passenger is concerned, there can be no compromise.  Any reader of my web site will know that I am not shy in asking for assistance and I am lucky enough to have a friend who owns his own garage, is a ministry trained and qualified welder and who was more that happy to bring his welding gear to my garage and weld in the supports.

Here you can see the plate welded to the chassis and the angle iron welded to the plate. We also welded the nut captive on the other side of the angle iron, and the picture below shows the nut welded in place for the centre seat belt mounting.

To ensure that the seat runners are firmly held at the front , we welded a plate across the chassis fixing it at both ends by welding angle iron to the plate and then to the chassis. Now it should not flex or twist when adjusting the seats, this is more than adequate for the IVA as the seat does not have the seat belt mounts attached to it ( Integral seat belt),  it does not have to be rock solid, although ours is.

Front Plate to mount seat runners

UPDATE  –   IVA ISSUES

When the car was presented for its IVA test, it failed on the position of the upper and lower seat belt mounts.

Both mount positions were governed by the pre manufactured points on the chassis highlighted on the below picture.

The upper anchorage positions failed because the belts went through the harness slots in the Cobra seats at an angle and fouled on the edge of the seat effectively creating a weak point in the harness.

The solution was to move the upper points to line up straight with the harness openings in the seat.

This entailed re-drilling the top rail, sleeving with steel tube and re-welding the sleeves in place.

New Upper Sealt belt mount

In fairness to Robin Hood if I had not used a Cobra seat with harness holes and used the Recaro seats supplied which have a separate headrest this problem would not have arisen.

However the lower positions were a different matter.  As pointed out earlier there is no inner seat belt mounting position but there is an outer, as circled on the above picture.

I therefore took the inner mount position from the position of the outer and welded a plate and anchorage points to suit.

However this meant the seat belt mount was too far forward and sat on your lap and did not pull back across the abdomen, allowing submarining in the event of an accident, i.e. sliding under the belt.

I therefore cut angle iron to size and welded the bolt holes further back which was accepted by the examiner and in fact praised as to the very good job we had made of the alteration.

Next Page