Centre seats doesn't fit

Hi

Tried to fit a centre seat to my 300 Tdi 90 (probably a 1995 model) today - unfortunately without success: It seems I am lacking about one inch in between the outboard seats to fit the seat.
I still have the original outboard seats and tried two different centre seats coming from 200/300 TDi's. Also my Landy has 7 seats in the papers and there are threaded holes for the centre seat, so I guess there was one centre seat mounted earlier.

The holes for mounting the seat seem to match perfectly to the seat frame. The problem is there is a rigid structure below the seat cover (blue in image) that interferes with the metal links of the outboard seats, so that the centre seat cannot moved downwards to be placed properly on the mounting holes.

I am bit surprised to see this since there seems to be a common opinion in many LR forums all seats can be interchanged between all Defenders downwards from TD5.

Am I just wrong about it and got a wrong seat? Or, is there any secret knowledge you need to have to mount the seat properly? Any hint is welcome!

Thanks for your help!

Björn

Later seats are slightly closer together than the earlier ones, to give more elbow room at the doors.
Do you hane an early centre seat?

Rougharse Racing said:

Do you hane an early centre seat?

Click to expand...

Seems I have them... However, I also thought I have earlier outboard seats.
What year did they change the sizing and seat positions? My Ninety is from 1995.

I think that the issue is that the outer seats are the same width, but mounted an inch closer to the centre of the vehicle, hence the narrower centre seat on later vehicles.

I might be wrong, but I seem to recall the extra elbow room (and presumably the seat change?) came in when Nineties/OneTens/130 became the Defender in 1990.