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seat belts

dutch bloke

Enthusiast
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16
Hi,

Does anyone have any experience with fitting seat belts in the back of my 1972 R4? Obviously not standard those days and I don't feel happy putting my kids in the back without them. Ideally, I would like a diagonal belt rather than a lapbelt. I had a mooch on the internet just now, but could not find any companies that fit them...

Can anyone help?
 
There are some photos of the mountings you'll need here: http://www.renault4.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=107

It's going to be a pain on cars built before 1983 that don't have the mountings. I have a friend who fitted a set of rear belts to a 1950's Citroen DS for his kids, and that involved welding the mounting points in. Think it ended up costing him about £1000. Think he took the car to a company in London. Could find out who it was if it's an option for yourself.
 
weld some 17mm nuts to 3" square plates as reinforcement then weld these to the body. this is all that was done in the 70's ( and they were not even welded to the body)
 
Good point there. Many aftermarket seat belt fitters tend to be cowboys anyway so it pays to know the theory so you know what to look for.

Here's the theory:
Good seat mountings tend to operate in shear. That is the seat belt pulls sideways on the bolt that holds it in rather than trying to pull the bolt out.

A 3 inch plate with the securing nut mounted behind the panel will take a lot of energy to rip through the panel. Welding it on a little helps even more - it would have to rip the panel out with it.

Reinforcements below the boot floor and inside the wheelarch panel are the easy ones. The upper mounting for a three point belt is the pain. Renault ones are welded to the side of the boot lid surround structure. Bolting them through there would be better than having no belts at all. I once bought a car with aftermarket belts attached to the panel under the rear side window. Angles seemed sompletely wrong for an adult, but might suit children. Again, a big mounting behind the panel to increase the pull-out load would be the sensible thing.

I'm no belt expert btw so from a liability point of view ignore everything I have said. :D
 
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