retractable belts for front seats

[philippe]

Dear forum members,
I am considering fitting retractable automatic seat belts to my car. Has anybody got details of how the retractors should be fastened to the B posts? Thanks in advance for your response.

[cass3958]

We have covered this before but I cannot find the thread in the search box.

When I first fitted my inertia reels in the front I noted there was not enough room for the inertia reel block to sit between the side of the seat and the "B" pillar so I mounted it on the floor just behind the seat. Problem with this is that it got in the way of people getting in the back seat as they were hitting their toes on t all the time. No good for a wedding car. So I was at a show one day and saw another S type with inertia reels fitted to the front seats but they were mounted on a bracket which sat over the top of the sill adjacent to the "B" pillar. I went home and made a couple of brackets to fit my car which are both bolted to the floor via the eye bolt and to the "B" pillar upon which the inertia reels sit out of the way. The only thing I had to do was remove the recline handle on the side of the seat as this interfered with the reel stopping the seat from sliding back or forth. The handle is in the glove box now if I ever needed to recline the seat.

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[philippe]

Rob,
many thanks for your detailed explanations! I think I could adapt the design of the brackets to the retractors I have so far found and get these out of the way for rear passengers. Kind regards.

[cass3958]

Just remember that the bottom of the "B" pillar is not designed or strong enough by itself to hold the seat belt. The eye bolt on the floor is the main point of security and the bolt I fitted at the top of the bracket which goes into the bottom of the "B" pillar is just to hold the inertia reel against the "B" pillar out of the way of the seat. The Eye bolt is screwed into the existing factory fitted seat belt mount hole which is fully strengthened for this purpose.

[philippe]

I have now found the 3rd anchor point in the floor of my car (the belts in my car are 2 points diagonal, I think this is as supplied by Jaguar in this country at the time).
Is there any point in bolting the brackets to be B pillars at all? It may raise questions from technical auditors since Jaguar did not include an anchor point in the pillars.
I can see also on the photos that the brackets were made thicker under the retractor as compared to the first design. Would you altogether recommend sturdier brackets?
The 1967 price list shows automatic belts as an optional extra. Was the same type of bracket used by Jaguar? Has anybody got the original brackets in his/her car?
Kind regards.

[cass3958]

Good spot with the thicker material used in the last photos. This was because when I had made the plates which was difficult because the thickness of the steel and trying to bend it in a vice, I found the flat section that the inertia reel was to sit on was too wide, wider than the sill it was sat on. So I cut the steel in half doubled it up and welded it together then re drilled the bolt holes. Thicker steel would be better but you then have the problem bending it to shape and as I said I was using a bench vice and a hammer to shape it. This photo shows the positions of the seat belt mounting points on the S Type circle in black. Two on the floor and on high up on the "B" pillar. Nothing at the bottom as the material here is just too thin to bolt the seat belt brackets to.

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