I certainly am no expert or engineer (but I do pretend to be one in my garage) but I spent a lot of time last summer looking for replacement seatbelts for a Corvette. I checked all the seal belt suppliers (aftermarket, restoration aand race car) and was surprised to see that the standard method of installing aftermarket belts is a a hole in the floor with a large fender washer on each side. I believe that I even saw DOT regulations specifying this setup. I was still not happy so I welded in an extra 6" x 8" support plate under the floor and then used fender washers on either side. A few years ago I did some junk yard scrounging to add belts to rear seat of old 4 Runner and observed that the mounting points in many cars are not as stout as you might expect to see. My conclusion was that the steel in the floor and pillars must be stronger then I thought and are probably strong enough to support the force of a collision and the associated forces imposed by the weight the average human body secured by a seatbelt. Of course I did not trust my own conclusion (based only on limited observation wth no empirical testing) and welded in additional support plates anyway :) You may be statistically safer with just a lap belt rather the nothing but I do not like either option. For the rear of my 56 Dodge I am going try to instal 3 sets of lap/shoulder belts in the back seat like a modern car (3 kids to worry about) which will probably require some additional bracing to be welded to the rear deck. This should not be too difficult and I can use aftermarket belts or get some from a donor car in a junk yard. The front is more problematic. On a car with a post I think the method described on the Julianos site www.julianos.com is the way to go. Mine is a hardtop. I am not crazy about the shoulder belt hanging down from the roof and spoiling the clean lines, It might as well have a post if I do that. I was looking at various convertables and how the shoulder belt retracts into the panel behind the seat. BUT all those cars have high back seats with a guide for the belt to keep it up high and over the shoulder. If the belt comes over the top of the relatively short back on the bench seat then it will have to loop over the shoulder (at least for me I am pretty tall) and you now have the added risk of spinal compression injuries caused by the belt. There are variuos "race car" 4 point harnesses available that get bolted to the floor, but again these are generally used with highback seats and the low back seat problem remains. ne approach is changing the front seat. Some pickups have a seat belt integrated into the seat and would probably look ok if reupholstered with classic materials, but I really want to stay with the look of the original seat. I have not resolved this yet. but will probably mount the belt high up on the roof channel and live with the belt hanging down.
As far as seat belts go I think I should add them but hear varying ideas about if they really are safe, just lap belts. I had not considered anything other than the lap belt. Any help or ideas will be appreciated. Walter Landry My personal opinion is that there is no way to make yourself TOTALLY safe if you are to be hurtling along at 60 mph in a metal box. I feel that every little bit helps, so I installed lap belts in my car. That being said, AI once had a coworker whose back was broken by being "Jackknifed" over a seatbelt while in the backseat of a car during a front end collision. The belt broke his back, but prevented him from leaving through the windshield. There is no way to know what would have happened without the belt, but he was statistically safer with it on. I'd like to have shoulder belts in the car, too, but haven't figured all that out yet, since the car is a 1957 Chrysler 4dr, and I'm not sure if the pillars are strong enough to hang shoulder belts on. Life seems to be a series of compromises, doesn't it! Joe Savard Lake Orion, MI ************************************************************* To unsubscribe or set your subscription options, please go to http://lists.psu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=l-forwardlook&A=1 ************************************************************* To unsubscribe or set your subscription options, please go to http://lists.psu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=l-forwardlook&A=1
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