Adding Extra Seats

[mikee55]

Hi, I might be owning a 1.8i on an R plate. But would like to know about welding extra seats and belts in the boot, to carry more kids?

 

Whats the legalities of this, please?

 

Thankyou, Mike

[Guest Colin Hunter]

Hi Mike. Welcome aboard!

 

Unless the vehicle has been type approved with extra seats and the conversion is carried out with "factory" components this will be illegal. Who wants to put their kids in a crumple zone? Best bet for multiple kiddy carrying is an MPV such as the Synergie (Or Espace) which can be gotten quite cheaply, (there's a 1999 80,000 mile 1.9td Synergie on Autotrader just now http://www.autotrader.co.uk/) and won't work out much more to run.

 

There's a car seat conversion on the market now which is legal and can be found here. http://www.multimac.co.uk/index.html Depending on gthe size of the children this will give you an extra seat. Buying the MPV may prove to be cheaper in the long run as I can't see this being cheap.

 

Cheers. Hope this helps. ;)

[techbod]

it would also need to be reclassified for insurance reasons from seating capacity so not worth it, buy a C8 ;)

[mikee55]

Hi, thanks for the replies. I was offered part ex on my car, which would have saved us some bucks.

I only thought about it, because I remember seeing it done in a Volvo Estate, years back.

With credit crunch, it seemed a good idea. But I had to find out, the owner of the Xantia said he'd install the seat in with the deal. Fair play, he did say that he'd find out the legalities first.

 

Thanks anyway.

 

Regards

 

Mike

[techbod]

the Volvo has ankering points because it was an option to have rear seats in but the insurance would be effected ( if you told them ) the xantia never had 7 seats so the police would notice ;) one thing to remember is the rear seat in the Volvo were for children only up to a certain weight so it wasn't really a 7 seater