Rear cubby box - more to the seat mods

[AcidHawk]

From the start I wanted to put a cubby box between the defender seats in the rear. You may remember that I didn't want to cut the wheel arches when I did the Seat Mod in my defender (I may be having second thoughts about that now... watch this space) and I moved the seats in from the doors to make it a little more comfortable. Problem is I didn't measure properly (Grrrrrr) and was about 10mm too narrow for the cubby box in its unmodified shape to fit.

LandyLuvver very kindly gave me a cubby box without a lid, that he had lying around at his workshop. So I didn't even have to build one. I got it home and carefully pulled out the cardboard linning inside.



Removed the vinyl - I had some black vinyl from before (Overhead shelf) that I wanted to cover the box in (or try anyway). I routed off about 5mm on each side - just enough to allow the seats to still move on their rails and added a stronger bottom.





I then took some black vinyl and copied the shape of the old piece I had removed.



Put it inside out around the box - stretched it a bit, and pinned it.



I then sewed a "French seam" on the lower part.



This is the part in the front of the cup holder section. With this done I went back to the box and tried to fit it on. Perfect! Now I just had to pin the angled part and take that upstairs to the sewing machine for another seam. When I had this complete I started stapling the vinyl to the cubby box. I was really supprised at how good it looked.





I had to make a lid and cover it and put a hinge on. I sprayed the inside cardboard and put it back into the cubby box and had completed the box part of the job. (that part took me about 2.5hrs)



I then needed a bracket to attach the box to the frame between the rear seats.





Off to the spray booth (actually I just use my work table)



Installed the brackets in the car (I needed to put a shim (small square of masonite) between the bracket and frame on each side.



Then fixed the cubby box to the brackets



There you have it. The cubby box with the seats back in. The family are really chuffed at the result , and best of all the whole thing cost me next to nothing becaused I used leftover stuff from previous projects.

[DFNDR WP]

Niiiiice job man.

[bvandyk]

Wow awesome! Looks really good