Wide range of interior parts and trim options from Alpha Seating

IF YOU’RE LOOKING FOR BESPOKE

UPHOLSTERY for your Land Rover, Alpha Seating might be a new name to you. But the company has been around since 2002, making a range of high-quality passenger vehicle seats and rock and roll beds for vans as well as trims to suit various models from a long list of manufacturers.

These include the one you’re here to find out about. Alpha Seating’s re-upholstery service is available for every- thing in a Defender’s cabin that ever had upholstery on it in the first place –like centre consoles, cubby boxes, sun visors, dash tops and door cards.

Did we mention roof linings? We did now. Defenders were pretty much born needing these replaced, and this is another area in which Alpha Seating has the answer to whatever questions you can think to ask.

And then of course there’s the seats themselves. The company can do new upholstery for first and second rows alike as well as bench seats, jump seats and headrests – and, no small matter, belts. It can repair and replace these, with M1 industry-standard testing and certification to back up the quality built in to its processes.

One thing that’s not standard, though, is the range of materials and colours it offers. You can have your items reupholstered in Land Rover’s own original finishes – or you can go bespoke and have it tailored just the way you want.

With everything made in-house, Alpha Seating promises high-quality work and very short lead times on orders.

The guys there can repair your existing upholstery, too, if that’s all you need.

Want to know more? Alpha Seating is a division of Complete Vehicle Accessories, which can treat your vehicle to everything from a towbar to a full conversion. They’re based in Hinckley, Leicestershire and can be found at www.alphaseating.com.

Tool storage options from Machine Mart

Price: £167.98-£359.98

From: www.machinemart.co.uk

MACHINE MART HAS ADDED a variety of new items to its Clarke range of tool storage options. These include two chests and a cabinet, the latter with a choice of optional side lockers, so you’re unlikely to be left wondering what’s in it for you.

First up is the CBB205C HD Plus 5 Drawer Tool Chest. This has four drawers at 575×261×49mm and a fifth at 575×261×64mm, all with a capacity of 35kg, as well as a lift-out tote tray.

Then there’s the CBB312C 12 Drawer Tool Chest, which also comes with a tote tray. This time you get nine smaller drawers measuring 170×361×49mm, two at 575×361×49mm and one at 575×361×64mm.

All drawers run on ball bearings and have full-width ali pull handles as well as protective anti-slip liners. Both chests have full-width piano hinges which are welded and riveted on to the top lid. The drawers on both units lock simultaneously when the lid is closed.

Another feature of both chests is that they can be paired up with Clarke’s CBB213C HD Plus 3 Drawer Tool Cabinet. This has two drawers measuring 584×380×73mm and another measuring 584×380×152mm and comes on castors to let you wheel it around the workshop.

The cabinet can also be paired with either the SL41C 8 Drawer Side Locker or the SL26C Cabinet and 2 Drawer Side Locker. The former has one drawer at 260x380x75mm, six at 260x380x57mm and two at 260x380x133mm, each with a 20kg capacity, while the latter has a large cabinet and two drawers of 230x380x60mm. Again, you get ball-bearing action, full-width ali handles and protective liners.

To advertise in The Landy, call our team on 01283 553244

We’re on Facebook: www.facebook.com/thelandyuk

Britpart network now offering major new range of LED bars

Price: £65-£225 plus VAT

Available from: Britpart dealers

ONE OF THE RULES ABOUT HARDCORE LAND ROVERS NOWADAYS is that if it doesn’t have at least one light bar, it might as well have square wheels. Back in the day, you used to start by considering the tyre size you wanted, work out the suspension lift you needed to accommodate it and take your project from there, but these days you start with the size of the biggest LED bar you can afford, figure out what kind of vehicle will look best underneath it and just muddle through from there.

There’s not exactly a shortage of options in the market, along with a deafening noise of opinion, counter-opinion, speculation and sheer guff as to what’s best. Expensive and high-end? No better than cheerful and low-priced, if you believe some of the importers of said cheerful and low-priced options. Expensive brands don’t come with a free side order of prawn crackers, either. Cheerful and low priced? Like lighting a candle and apt to contain a Russian spy, if you believe some of the importers of the aforemen- tioned expensive and high-end options. You can see where this is going.

To cut through the confusion, Britpart has introduced a range of LED bars. These have various sizes and formats – wouldn’t be much of a range otherwise – and use a mixture of Cree and Osram LEDs.

So there are differences. There are similarities too, though. All five of the lights in the range have a die-cast alloy housing and polycarbonate lens, come with stainless fixings and promise a lifetime of more than 30,000 hours. That’s about three and a half years, if you were somehow to need non-stop illumination and live in a place where it’s eternally night-time.

So, the range starts with a 222mm single-row Cree unit with a 40W output and 2400 raw lumens. And it continues with what is basically the same unit again, only with a second one piggybacked on top of it. So all the numbers are the same, except for the raw lumen output which doubles up to 4800.

Both these options have high-beam patterns as standard. But move up to next lamp in the range and you get a combo pattern allowing you to dim them on the road.

This is a 36W dual-row Osram lamp with a length of 213mm, whose power output of www.thelandy.co.uk

120W translates itself into a dazzling 9600 raw lumens.

Getting bigger now, the next option in the range is a 570mm (22.5”) dual-row Osram LED bar putting out 120W and 9600 raw lumens. And finally, the biggest of them all is a five-foot whopper with 240W and 16,800 raw lumens. If you want to illuminate your whole street, or indeed town, this is the one to buy.

It’s also the one to buy if you propose to immerse your vehicle for long periods in water deep enough for the pressure to register. That’s because it’s waterproof to IP68, whereas the others are a merer IP67 and can therefore only cope with being dunked to a depth of 15cm-1m. Obviously, if you do propose to do this with your vehicle we’d be grateful if you’d let us know so we can come and watch. Equally obviously, if you’re going to be spending long periods of time with your truck completely submerged, an LED bar that continues to function is going to be right at the top of your list of priorities. Colour temperatures are in the range of 6000-6500K throughout the five options, which offer a world of opportunities whether you’re a big-time modified vehicle builder or just a bloke who wants to be able to see where he’s going when laning at night. Or a submarine driver. Prices will vary wildly from unit to unit and dealer to dealer –as always with the Britpart network, the key is to shop around and, once you’ve got a specialist you trust, turn yourself into one of their VIP clients.

Issue 111: Mar 2023