installed replacement retractable lap belt

[torchard]

I installed one of two retractable lap belt sets I ordered as replacements for the interia units. Bought them from wescoperformance.com. Two sets plus shipping comes in at about $100 USD. They are model 209 S (short).

You could probably retrofit something from the wreckers but the older ones are getting harder to come by and the price for new is pretty reasonable. Anyway, the retractable unit installed pretty easily in place of the old. I did a bit of shimming and nipped out a wee bit of the seat trim to get it all back looking as stock and working correctly. The female side is actually more challenging as it's the side with all the seat controls and it's a bit of a mensa test to get the trim piece on and off. I tried the intellectual approach first, but reverted to brute force ;)

The westco replacement comes with a longer plastic sleeve over the female belt which I didn't use, instead I slid the new female belt into the original sheath. Sexy eh? Replacing both sides of the belt is pretty straight forward. The challenge is getting the controls side of the seat trim reinstalled.

When removing and installing the seat time you gotta watch you don't torque on the seat adjustments linkages and brackets etc too much as they're kind of delicate after years of use. You actually have to unbolt one of the levers first and I had a !@##$% of a time getting the washers and nut reinstalled. In fact that was the most problematic and time consuming part of this job.

While they're not three-points I do feel a little better with this option.