OV9

I have an official F1 Diary, based on an early 2000s FT Diary that never went out. Bernie used to buy loads and get them all personalised for the movers and shakers in F1, I worked at Letts at the time and he just didn't pay in 2003 or 2004, and they pretty much all got pulped. I probably have one of half a dozen that lived.
It lives in tissue and box and has some cool pics and blurbs. TBH, I had forgotten it existed until now. I did use to have pics of Jimmy McRae rallying a tr7/8 near where I grew up, as taken by a car mad teacher who knew I was a fan.

I've got a carbon break disc from Fernando Alonso's Renault F1 car, possibly the R23 or R24.

Kinda silly project. I had some old Defender parts and always thought it would be cool to hang them on the wall but never had the means to until recently.
I had to print a backing frame to hold it all together, and then I thought I might as well add lights to it and it all snowballed into a rather large project

On top of this I then fitted the actual car parts

The bumper which is also off my car and rather heavy was also mounted with brackets that I printed.

I still have the seats to make up, but I can’t think of any nice designs. All the ones I like are formed from thick curved steel tube and I have no way of doing that.

Excellent work Mito…

Although those lights look too bright to be off a defender

Probably need to understand the positioning in the room (as it looks a bit “shoved in the corner”? but nice idea.

Dodgy earth or water in the relay for the indicators stuck on?

It is shoved in the corner of the garage above the entrance to the toilet
There’s a set of stairs opposite it which means you can’t fit a car in that gap, hence the whole v8 coffee table and car seats plan.

More Defendwr stuff is always a positive thing

Now swap that bumper for a winch bumper, winch rope hanging down as a pull chord

Oh and some orange paint to add rust.

And and and ......

Dave!

V8Granite wrote: Mon Nov 24, 2025 11:02 am Now swap that bumper for a winch bumper, winch rope hanging down as a pull chord

YES !!! Excellent Idea...

^
Which has made me think....make a smaller one for inside the room, et voila - toilet roll holder.
Outside the door, the indicator lights could be red or green for occupied/unoccupied.
Something something something snorkel.

Good work, Mito

nuttinnew wrote: Mon Nov 24, 2025 11:03 pm Outside the door, the indicator lights could be red or green for occupied/unoccupied.

Another zinger!!! we should be charging for this design work!!

Obvious snorkel use is a hand drier probably but a bit much for Mito’s garage.

Shower head maybe???

Over estimating my abilities a teeny bit chaps

I finally managed to finish this project. I had the front seats left that I found from a pretty mint X351 XJ which had only done 70,000 miles before the crank snapped in two and it found itself at a scrappers.

Truth be told I don’t really like any of the car seat turned into home furniture designs so I thought I’d keep it simple so I don’t spend too much effort on it. I bolted a wooden frame on and then decided to 3D print vanity covers for it - a lot of the sides of the seat was exposed metal so I could hide all that too.

All of the modelled vanity covers

I was hoping that the prints would be good enough that I could just glue everything together and call it done but there was a lot of shrinkage problems, warping and the parts would come out in different shades depending on the orientation.

So I had to do some additional work on it. Filling, sanding, painting

It’s good enough to call it done


Oh and I’ll get the disappointing bit out the way, I didn’t power the seats. It would have greatly complicated the vanity trim to accommodate movement and I’d have had to cut all the wiring to each motor individually to rewire it. It’s quite complicated underneath as the seats have TVs in the back so there’s a big control module blocking access to everything. It’s too much work for a novelty feature :p

They look pretty good

mik wrote: Sun Jan 11, 2026 3:57 pm They look pretty good

+1

Thanks.

I always wanted to do that with my Volvo 440i seats, THE most comfortable car seats ever.

But I’m a lazy fucker so hey, there you go

There’s a bit of Volvo in these seats

Good work
I guess the design of the seat gubbins goes back to the PAG days
I'm sure there will be a future update "I didn't find them that comfortable in the position they were in, so..."