Today I bought two steel strips to fix the seats in place. Having decided to stick with the existing seats for now, I devised a simple system to fix the seats in. The easiest way to describe it is in a drawing so here it is!
The whole picture is a cross section of the cockpit area. The two egg shapes represent the seats with the mounting bolts protruding through the bottom of the car. The mounting bolts in the centre are drilled through the chassis members each side of the tunnel. The black strip at the bottom is my steel strip drilled to accept the mounting bolts of the seats and the centre tunnel. The seats are then bolted to the ally floor, steel strip, the tunnel and each other. That should be good enough. Now if only my drilling is as accurate as my planning ;-)
I've bought some aluminium mesh for the front grill as well. Time will tell how the softer aluminium will be able to take the impacts of regular usage but it will do for now. At least it won't rust. My last one was steel and although I sprayed it black, I must admit that the car wasn't on the road long enough for it to rust :-(
Hopefully this next week(end) will see a little more progress on the car. Another laptop sold means that I can buy one of those jump starter/compressor/12v power supplies. The jobs todo list remains the same, at least it isn't increasing :-))