With more of my car adventures being involved with motorsport and motor miss adventure, I felt it was becoming time to get a fire extinguisher installed in the Freelander. Fortunately, Land Rover has an accessory kit for that!
The LR Kit, LR002523, includes a template, bracket with fittings, and extinguisher. The extinguisher is a standard off-the-shelf size, so I can easily get a replacement once it’s used up. I remember all the JLR development cars had a fire extinguisher installed, but I didn’t realise they were installed onto an accessory kit.
Preparing the Carpet
The bracket is mounted between the seat mounts for the front passenger seat. The holes for mounting are in the body, but first, the carpet needs trimming. The image above shows the area of carpet that will need to be removed.
It’s rather hard to cut around the paper template as it is so flexible. So my solution was to put some masking tape on the carpet, trace the outline, and then cut through the tape and the carpet. A short steel rule helps to keep the lines straight.
I liked the idea of hinging the piece of carpet so that it can fold back into the hole, but the bracket has a lip on the long sides to hold the carpet and trim the edge. These lips give a neat finish but make hinging the carpet impossible. Lifting the carpet piece out reveals the holes in the vehicle’s body.
Rivnut Installation
The Freelander fire extinguisher is a 1kg powder type, the total weight is quite a bit more, and you wouldn’t want that flying around in a heavy braking/rollover situation. The supplied rivnuts are rather heavy-duty, which comes as no surprise. I tried the old spanner and bolt trick to compress them, but in the end, I spent the money on a Sealey short arm rivnut installer. Since buying the installer, I haven’t stopped installing rivnuts, but that is another story!
Fully Installed
And there it is, installed. A simple 20 minutes. The extinguisher’s cage is easy to remove, with a couple of screws. The pressure gauge is face-up for the occasional visual check. A word of caution from past experience: the extinguisher’s mass stays cold for hours and is right next to the passenger’s calves. It might be advisable to keep a blanket in the car for the other half during the winter.
Why didn’t I install it in the boot? Well, the LR kit is designed for mounting between a front seat, and there is quite a delay in getting out of the car, going to the boot and pulling the extinguisher, and then getting back to the fire.
This extinguisher size will not put out a fire if it has taken hold. However, the extinguisher is intended to put out very small fires or damp them down while you pull someone out of a car, so those few seconds going to the boot could be critical.
M
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It’s a neat installation but I think I would struggle to reach it, and release the strap, from the driver’s seat. Do you know if the same three holes are already in the driver’s side floor so that it could be fitted there? Then it would be readily accessible.
Hi Simon.
The clamp is not tight, the plastic-coated arms around the base and neck do most of the holding, so it is quite easy to release and grab with one hand.
On the Land Rover engineering cars, the fire extinguisher could be installed on either side of the vehicle so I suspect the holes are present on both the left and right side of the car regardless of hand of drive.
You could maybe push a long sowing needle through the carpet to check if the hole is there?
M
My problem is that I broke my left arm very badly a few years back and I’m not
able to straighten it and stretch to reach things. So mounted under my legs would be a better option. Food for thought. Thanks.