Seat Belt Story

I need to say at this point, I am catching up on the blog, and this, as well as a couple other projects, were early on. In fact, this was the first thing I did to the car, in the driveway of my sister's house on the trip to bring it home. Looking back at, I realize how naive I was. Remember, I have never worked on cars, and know very little about them. Alright, on with the story of the seat belts...

Since this is a 75, it came stock with lap belts, which had never been upgraded. Part of the agreement with my girlfriend of going with me to pick up the car was to replace the lap belts with shoulder belts. I poked around the internet, and with advice from the good folks at the AlfaBB chose a pair of shoulder belts from Wesco Performance. Wesco has shoulder belts specifically designed for classic roadsters (as do others). Basically, they have a retractor designed to be behind the seat, as opposed to over the shoulder as in new cars. I also ordered a couple different mounting kits, as I wasn't exactly sure what I would been, and wouldn't have time to wait for a shipment. I had all of this delivered to my sister's house, which was only a couple hours away from where we were picked up the car.

After an interesting drive from Connectcut to the cape (I will tell the story of buying the car, and driving it for the first time at a later date...) we got to my sister's, and I got busy on the conversion. Turns out it was very easy. The original belt was mounted with an extender. It really was just a matter of unscrewing the bolts, removing the old hardware, then mounting the new hardware. I will admit a couple of false starts, but all in all, pretty straightforward.

Below is a picture of the original seatbelt mount. The extender mounts to the chasis, and allows the retractor to be below the convertible top when it is down.






























Picture of the mount.












The replacement belt







Now, I'll point out some safety issues that I'm sure some of you are already noticing. Yes, I mounted the extender at and angle to make the retractor work better, and yes, I am aware that no matter how hard I cranked on the bolts, a severe impact would probably yank the extender straight, causing an inch or two of forward movement before the belt locked, which could cause injury. After some research, and time to ponder, I think I will look to replace the original seats with later model sport seats. They have the shoulder harness, and I have also heard they are more comfortable. With the way the angle is currently, I see a shoulder being dislocated or broken with the downward pressure. I still feel it is safer than just the lap belt. I don't really want to find out though...