Projects Seat belts

I know this has been covered but no posting has answered my question. I have a 51 Styline Deluxe. I would like to put in 3 point seat belts. Every site I see have instructions for mounting the 3 point in 51 Chevy trucks but not cars. They all show the shoulder harness being mounted in the upper cab corner. That’s great if you have a truck. As stated I have a car. Can a 3 point belt system be mounted in a car or am I limited to only lap belts. If you have mounted shoulder straps in your car please post pictures. Thanks

 

Take a look at Julianos seat belt tech.

 

You can.

You need to weld in a support into your B pillar to mount the shoulder belt anchor correctly.

if you do a search you will find a thread by one of our Aussie or Kiwi brothers showing there install .
Not overly difficult , but definitely required to get the seat belts installed correctly and work if your ever in an accident.

 

Here are some instructions

https://www.wescoperformance.com/seat-belt-install-3-point-retract.html#top

 

Pretty good instructions there. One could make their own plate out of a suitable piece of flat bar Putting a tail on it that you either trim or remove after it is all in place might help in some cases.

 

The limiting factor is whether or not your B post is far back enough. On a '51 car, it should be no problem. On my T coupe, I mounted my retractors in the package tray area.

 

Thanks, this is the type of info I was hoping for.

 

Here's another that was mentioned above

https://www.julianos.com/Articles.asp?ID=275

Go Sox!

 

I thought I had a picture of the Studebaker install, but I didn't, I welded a 7/16 fine nut (IIRC) to a piece of flat steel that would drop into the B pillar, I had drilled a hole for the seat belt bolt and then held it in place with the seat belt bolt and did a plug weld to the steel strap to hold it in place.

 

@vtx1800 , that sounds much like the method Juliano's recommends. Thanks.

 

Yup. All of my belts are from Julianos.

I have retracting 3-point belts in all 4 seating positions.

 

1 vote against this idea. That narrow pillar was not designed to take tons of force generated in a big crash. Once the shoulder mount is ripped loose the rest of the belt will go slack. So you will eat the steering wheel and dash, or be ejected. Better to have either lap belts with proper anchors, or a race harness mounted as the rule book says and to a proper anchoring system. Belt angle is also a critical Feature to providing proper force dissipation and to avoid causing an injury itself.

 

I vote for the idea.

The human body isn't designed to take tons of force against a non-collapsible steering column , so that narrow pillar is better than non at all.
Remember there is usually a closed door in front of that pillar so it's frame will help dissipate forces.

You are actually better off if the pillar bends , this lessens the chance of injury.
It is like watching a race-car barrel rolling along a wall. This looks spectacular and dangerous but the car is slowly dissipating energy. [as long as the driver stays contained in the car, they usually suffer minor injuries]
Hit the wall square on at 30+ mph has more chance of killing the driver.

@Chgo Sox Fan
We added a 3 point belts to our 57 Belair sedan [which has narrow pillars]
This was done carefully not to disturb the exterior paint and required some thought.
A point to remember is .......do not mount them too high or they will "cut your neck"
On later model cars the steering wheel centerline and seats is much further away from the pillars so the mounts are much higher.
Early cars have everything much closer to the doors.

You also need to take into consideration , garnish mould screws etc when doing this. They are almost impossible to drill at an angle later






On a 2 door sedan you can get up inside the pillars [on our 57 it only took about 30 secs each side to align everything ]

 

There are some good points that I will incorporate in my car.

Mike

 

I vote for the idea, as well.

Since the nut plate needs to be welded in, it is easy enough to reinforce the pillar, as I did on mine.

Mine has thick wall rectangle tube welded inside, and is also boxed.

All of that is welded to both the roof and the quarter panel.

 

@Chgo Sox Fan

They don't need to be welded in ..... A couple of Stainless steel rivets is enough.
In NZ these were engineer designed for our Govt regulations. [The Irony is FIA motorsport is more lenient on these in race cars]

NZ road regulations require riveted double plates. special emphasis is on the radius of the corners so they wont shear the parent sheetmetal
here is the floor plates [underneath]


The top side


The principle behind double plates is to allow the parent material to distort without tearing. If it bends upwards at one end it bends downwards at the other end [bending loads] one plate end is under tension, the other under compression, on both sides

Factories achieve the same result with spot welds and Cupped plates [so they don't shear through]

on our 57 pillars we spot welded the plates because there wasn't enough room for a top plate [between the pillar and the trim]


Getting it up there required some brain cells

 

Lots of good ideas, but I think we may have lost our original poster.

 

Be careful with this. If the belt is angled downward from your shoulder to the anchor point, it can crush your shoulder in an accident. The shoulder belt should always be angled upwards from your shoulder to the anchor point. I don't know if this applies to your installation or not, just saying for those who read this to be careful about that.