Scuba Tank Holder for Land Rover Freelander

Introduction

If you own a Land Rover Freelander (or any other compact SUV) and have your own diving cylinders, you will know that securing them safely swallows most of your available boot (or U.S. trunk) space. While ranting about this when packing my car the other day, my dad pointed out that they would fit very snugly vertically in the alcoves at the rear of the boot.

The only problem with this is that there was no way to safely hold them upright. There are a few flimsy turn-buckle fasteners (see acknowledgements), but these certainly would not hold a 15 litre steel diving cylinder in the event of an accident!

After several hours of thought, iterations, bleeding hands and nasty words I finally came up with a safe, reliable and convenient solution. On this page you will find step-by-step instructions on how to install these anchor points in your Freelander.

In short, it consists of two eye-bolts mounted to your chassis and a spring-clip/bungee cord combo that loops around the front of your cylinder and the neck to securely hold it in place.

Disclaimer

This was a really fun and rewarding project, but it involves power tools and cutting holes in your interior trim, so I obviously waive all responsibility regarding what you do to yourself or your car. Language is British english and measurements are metric. I accept no liability whatsoever for misunderstandings or wrongful measurements.

Tools

• 20 mm hole drill
• T50 Torx socket and wrench
• T20 Torx screw driver/bit
• Misc screwdrivers/spanners
• Small hands

Parts

• 5×75 mm eye bolts (x4)
• 5 mm nuts
• 5 mm spring washers
• 5 mm dia, 32 mm wide washers (x6)
• 5 mm dia, 20 mm wide washers (x2)
• 500 mm bungee cord (x2)
• Spring clip (x2)

Estimated Time

The first one I did (left hand side) took me a whole week of afternoons planning and finding the right tools and parts for the job, as well as most of a saturday. The right hand one took me only 2.5 hours, including taking the photos. I would allow 3 hours for your first one and 2.5 hours for your second. Your mileage may vary, of course.

Instructions

General points to consider

1. Remember, what comes off, must go back on! When taking things apart, pay careful attention to what goes where, because you’ll have to do the reverse at some point.
2. There are lots of little screws and clips and what-not that will be floating around while you’re working. You’d be well advised to keep these in a very safe place, and again, take note of where they come from!

Part 1: Disassembly

1. Take one last look at your boring, unscuba-friendly Freelander. It’s about to change forever!
   
2. Gently prise the courtesy light out using a flat screwdriver and disconnect the two power wires.
   
3. Remove the four turn-buckle fasteners by twisting them 90 degrees to the left.
   
4. Remove the luggage cover and unscrew the bracket.
   
5. Using the T50 Torx drive, unscrew the seat belt mounting.
   
6. Using the T20 Torx drive, unscrew the 6 screws holding the rear carpet retainer. Gently pull this off. Note that there are two spring clips holding it in place.
   
7. The trim is now ready to come off. Gently prise it out, starting at the rear. There are several clips, mostly at the top and front of the trim, as well as two studs. Pay attention to all of these, because you have to fight them later, when you’re putting everything back together!
   
8. Now you need to take off the top rear retainer clip. This part is quite a pain. Start by pushing a small screwdriver or similar up on the left hand side to push in the ‘one-way’ mounting clips. To get an idea of what’s going on behind there, take a look at the top forward retainer clip. Once you’ve pushed in the clips, try to get one side of the retainer out. If you have a lot of patience, repeat the exercise on the right hand side, but I didn’t have much luck here. See the following two steps.
   
9. Now give it an extra nudge with a flat screwdriver.
   
10. I quickly gave up trying to be nice to these guys and realised they could take quite a beating and still be able to be bent back into shape, so take to the right hand side with the flat screwdriver. After some coaxing, it should pop out easily. Of course if you never plan on putting these things back there’s no need to be gentle, anyway!
    
11. With the clip out, you will see there’s a square hole, where you will mount one of the eye bolts. The other one is conveniently located slightly above the courtesy light.
    

Part 2: Assembly

1. Ok, let’s get the nasty part out of the way. I hated this part the most…measuring where to cut the forward hole! It’s a bit of a black art, and you should probably take a bit more care than I did (tape measures make lousy plumb-lines!). Find suitable reference points on both the chassis and the trim. I chose to measure vertically from the top of the trim, and horizontally from the securing stud. My measuremnts were 77 mm across, 167 mm down, but please measure these for yourself!
   
2. Now no matter how carefully you measured where to drill, you’d be crazy to blindly go and chew a 20 mm chunk out of your car without checking first, so I drilled a 4 mm pilot hole. (This is useful for starting off with the larger drill, anyway).
   
3. Partially replace the trim (this is good practice for later) and probe the pilot hole to see if you’re in the right general place. You don’t want to hit metal, and wiggle it around a bit to make sure you’re more or less in the middle of the hole.
   
4. If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again…
   
5. Once you’re reasonably sure of yourself, remove the trim again and load up the 20 mm bit in your drill. Take a deep breath and let rip!!
   
6. Time to put the eye bolts in! Get the necessary pieces together. Note that I had to cut one of the eye bolts down a bit. This is because there is a solid wall behind the rear mounting hole. Cut it down so that the overall length is 40 mm. For the rear assembly, the second washer needs to be smaller, too. I couldn’t get my hands on the right size, so I turned down one of the 32 mm washers to about 24 mm.In the picture, from left to right, you have the eye bolt, 5mm washer, 5mm spring washer, 6mm washer, 32×6mm washer and then the same reversed. (This is because I couldn’t get hold of broad 5mm washers. If you did, you obviously don’t need the 6mm washers.)
   
7. Now comes another fiddly bit. Put the first half of the washers on the 40 mm eye bolt and slowly thread it into the mounting hole while adding the washers and nut onto it on the other side. Be careful not to drop anything! There is now a 5 mm nut floating around in my rear bumper somewhere.
   
8. Adjust the rear nut so that the assembly will protrude about 35 mm when tightened. Allow for compression of the spring washers. Now tighten the front washer using a spanner and something to hold the eye bolt horizontally.
   
9. Repeat the last two steps for the forward assembly. This one is much easier! Again, don’t drop anything. Note that this eye bolt should be secured vertically, and the neck of the bolt should be about 25 mm.
   
10. Replace the trim by reversing the first few steps from part 1. Don’t forget the plastic collar when you’re re-attaching the seat belt!
    

Part 3: Finishing Touches

1. To give it a nice finished look I put a strip of protective foam where the cylinder would come in contact with the trim. If your cylinder has a net, this isn’t really necessary, but it looks good, nonetheless. Clean the area with a mild solvent and wipe dry.
   
2. Cut the foam lining to size and carefully apply it to the trim, while peeling off the backing.
   
3. Clip the bungee cord to the forward eye bolt using the snap hook.
   
4. Your scuba tank holder is now complete!!
   

Part 4: Use

1. Sit your tank in the alcove and bring the lower end of the bungee cord around the front and fasten to the rear eye bolt.
   
2. Pull the cord tight and take the upper end over the top of the tank, in front of the neck.
   
3. Fasten this end of the bungee cord to the rear eye bolt as well.
   
4. Load in the rest of your dive gear and step back and admire your handiwork.
   

Points to ponder

1. I’m convinced this solution will firmly hold a cylinder in place, provided the cord is tight enough. However, if you have doubts, another option would be to use luggage tie-downs instead of the bungee cord.
2. My original plan was to replace both rear fasteners with eye-bolts, and hence have three anchor points, but this proved to be a real pain getting the trim on and off, and I think it’s pretty unnecessary, anyway.
3. If you have any comments (good or bad!) or queries about this design, I’d love to hear from you. And if you carry out these mods on your car, I’d love to hear from you even more! tankholders@hokemon.com

Acknowledgements

1. My dad, for the bright idea.
2. Bart, for his incredible patience while turning down the stainless steel washers (These things are ridiculously tough!).
3. My Haynes manual, for telling me what the funny grey clip thingys were called.
   [Haynes 3929, Land Rover Freelander 1997 to 2002 (R registration onwards) Petrol & Diesel, ISBN 1 85960 929 5]

©2006 Chris Hockaday. All rights reserved.
www.tankholders.hokemon.com