Rear sideseats

In the case of Klonk, he will be defined in WA as a utility.

In WA it is illegal to ride in the back of a utility. If Steve gets permission to add seats, I think it would help his case if he shows photos of how the 86" Station Wagon was set up with rear seating.

Mind you, given the law about utes and the restrictions on where a child can sit in a motor vehicle in WA, it may be a difficult task to convince the authorities that converting an essentially unsafe ute from the early 50's to carry more people, is a good thing.

Good luck Steve - your restoration is superb!

Cheers Charlie

Thanks guys for your ideas, may have a lead to talking to the right people on the matter.

While discussing this subject at work the other day I was reminded about this business in town I'd forgotten about.



Home - Big Red Fire Engine



Must give them a call and see how he managed to get permission. Will let you know

Ps I see they also do tours in Sydney and Perth , there are phone no's on their contact page.


Cheers Steve

Tonight I gave Julie at ''The big red fire engine'' a call, she was happy to help.

So basicly if the vehicle had the side seats fitted they are not illegal to use, hence their use of fire engines.
Seatbelts are not recomended by the DoT for the side seats as they cause more injury due to twisting of your spine especially at low to moderate speeds. Seatbelts are not fitted to their fire engines.

But Julie also has a letter from the DoT that she carries when out and about, stating that she is not breaking the law, as she regularly gets hasselled by the enthusiastic young coppers with no idea about old cars, they even pick on the non cancelling indicators. She lets them ramble on for a while , if they dont see reason then she drops the letter out and says Im happy to see you in court! "They can see I have hire car number plates so do they really think Im going to have anything illegal and risk my bussiness."

So where do I stand? Well the seat mounting holes in the back are there, drilled from factory as standard, with no bolts in them, so whos to say the seats werent fitted in the past, it may have been owned by a farmer that fitted the seats to take the kids to town or carry farm hands around the farm. I also have a land rover sales pamphlet from 1954 showing the seats as optional equipment as well as an instruction manual with the seats listed in the optional section.
I will phone the DoT For a chat and see what they have to say but when rego time comes the seats will be fitted and well see what happens.

Cheers Steve

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by klonk

So where do I stand? Well the seat mounting holes in the back are there, drilled from factory as standard, with no bolts in them, so whos to say the seats werent fitted in the past, it may have been owned by a farmer that fitted the seats to take the kids to town or carry farm hands around the farm. I also have a land rover sales pamphlet from 1954 showing the seats as optional equipment as well as an instruction manual with the seats listed in the optional section.
I will phone the DoT For a chat and see what they have to say but when rego time comes the seats will be fitted and well see what happens.

Cheers Steve

---

Good move Steve; you have all the right evidence to make your case.

Good luck!

Cheers Charlie

The only issue you may have is if records held for your vehicle indicate it is a 3 seater - which indicates it never originally had rear seats or they were officially removed.

So if you now turn up with rear seats they may query that. Does your state record seating capacity on the rego docs? If not then dont worry because as mentioned rear seats were always available for them.

Garry

I'll bet they did not record seat numbers when it was first registered - but how recently has it been registered, or perhaps more pertinently, re-registered?

John

I have a clean skin no rego papers and no rego plates and being a Queensland car no dealer records either, all I know it was dispatched from the factory on the 27/10/50 to Annard and Thomson, Brisbane.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by klonk

I have a clean skin no rego papers and no rego plates and being a Queensland car no dealer records either, all I know it was dispatched from the factory on the 27/10/50 to Annard and Thomson, Brisbane.

---

Whose records were destroyed in a flood. It is barely possible that Qld may still have some details, but I doubt that even if they did these would include number of seats. (And you would have to start the enquiry with the Q-plate number, which you probably don't know.)

John

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dinty

I also don't think you can carry passengers in the rear whilst on the road, I just bought the seats to fill in the missing bits from the vehicle, I certainly will carry people in the back (if they wanted a ride) on private property and driving sensibly, cheers Dennis :)
ps I'm now on the lookout for the 2 grab handles,,.

---

have them here regards jim

A friend of mine fitted origional side mounted seats in the back of his 80" before he registered it & when he took it for rego they registered it as a 7 seater in Qld. This was about 20 or more hears ago. He was in the police force so should have known wearher it was leagle or not.