Of Seat Belts

[Guest]

How would you install 3-point belts in a 2 or 4 door hardtop?<P>------------------<BR> <A HREF="http://www.fortunecity.com/meltingpot/poland/356/" TARGET=_blank>www.fortunecity.com/meltingpot/poland/356/</A>

[Dave@Moon]

With a roll cage! The roof on a hardtop was really more of a cosmetic item than a structural one. You'd be asking for real trouble trusting an roof mounted anchor point to not move relative to the seat frame in an accident in a vintage car. <P>Now if the car had designed in structural integrity for the belts (as they should've been post-1969), then that's a different story. But then they'd already be there by law anyway so that's a moot point.<P>Perhaps, if you're <I> real </I> good at engineering and fabrication, you could weld up a seat mounted system. But this would only work in 4-doors as the seat backs have to move in 2-door hardtops for rear seat access. And some cars (like the early VW bug as I recall) had somewhat weak seat mounts anyway that you'd have to trust.<P>Most convertibles and hardtops of this era (1969-1970's) have the shoulder belt mounted on the door pillar, which is fine if there's a factory mount there. It would be a car-by-car evaluation process (I think) to determine if you could <I> safely </I> install a mounting point there. And at that, you'd be creating a new saftey problem by limiting rear seat access and egress.<P>The jist is, I think you'd probably be safer in a well designed lap belt no matter how you do it.<p>[This message has been edited by Dave@Moon (edited 07-22-2000).]

[Bill Stoneberg]

For some how to's on this subject take a look at Juliano's web site. They make seat belts for old cars.<BR>The link for it is <A HREF="http://www.julianos.com/how2.html" TARGET=_blank>http://www.julianos.com/how2.html</A> <BR>Good luck and let me know how it turns out because I want to the same in my 1950 Buick.<BR>Bill<p>[This message has been edited by Bill Stoneberg (edited 07-22-2000).]