Rover Sports Register Forum

I am in the process of fitting new carpets and life will be much easier if I can take the seats out.
How is this done? Under the squabs there are two rows of square nuts, but their screws are not obviously accessible, they may be captive,but I doubt it!
The seats are sticky in the runners and will benefit from a clean and lubricant. The seats don’t just slide out of the runner rail do they? That would be nice! Faint hope I think.
Or are the runners bolted to the floor or chassis?
Advice welcomed
David

Hi David,

With both my P1 and P2 the seats just slide out of the runners. Obviously, you have to hold the locking lever aside to allow forward and backward movement. On my Tourer, the seats slide out the front but, with the P2 saloon they come out the back. You will find it’s quite a squeeze to get them far enough forward or back to lift out the rails and it may be necessary to remove the tunnel cover or the rear seat squab to get sufficient movement.

The square nuts you can see under the seat squabs are the fixings for the rails. However, the screw heads are not captive and there is one on each side nearest the seat back that you cannot see via the seat squab space, so don’t try and remove any of those.

Both my cars have wooden floors and the rails are bolted through with access to the nuts from under the car. However, I guess yours has a steel floor and may have different fixings. Afraid I’m not familiar with steel floored P1/P2 cars but probably not much different, although likely more rusty! When I made and fitted my carpets, I removed the seat runners from the floor to get the carpet underneath and fixed through it. Be careful drilling through carpet though as the weave can pick up on the drill bit and pull out across the width of the carpet. Very annoying! To avoid this it’s best to make a hole in the carpet with a thin chisel or similar sharp implement.

Hope that helps a bit.

Tony.

That is really helpful, many thanks. I suspect my seat runners are simply jammed from lack of use, so a bit of force and penetrating oil should do it! My tourers have wooden floors that are in good condition.my carpets and the set I borrowed from the spares store have cut outs for the runners (properly bound, so I think this was how it was done. The back carpets simply slide under the seats and are retained by normal carpet studs. On no 58 I have been able to retain the original toe board carpet and the vertical carpet under the back seat which is satisfying.

Hello David
Good to meet you - and grandson and cars - at MK. I see we were even pictured in Freewheel! As to removing the seats, sliding backwards off the runners certainly works on 6 light saloons and on sports saloons, if my memory is correct. So possibly on tourers too. Judiciously applied violence may be the solution!
Beat of luck, DavidM

The seats came out forwards after a bit of persuasion! I’m not sure how easily they will go back…
Carpets are ready so will see the trimmer next week and make it easy to fit the carpets.
I may need to do a bit of work on the wooden bases, but it’s looking good. I think I can swap the seats round,or at least the removable bottoms …the previous owner tended to lean to the right and it’s a bit saggy! so I’ll see if it works

Carpets in, look really good, in particular the hand brake and gear lever gaiters really sets them off.
Seats fitted back on to the runners reasonably easily, a matter of attempting to line them up!
Now remaking the boot toolbox and the lid for the side screen compartment (quite a complicated set up involving double hinges!) fortunately there was enough left from the original to replicate it.
I will leave the original rather tatty canvas/Rexine screen between the hood and what passes for a boot! and not replace it. The same with the padded covers over the back of the wheel arches in the boot/ hood compartment.
Getting there.