Alternative Seat Belts
Older Cessna model 170 and 172 airplanes had only seat belts with no shoulder harnesses. The Cessna Service Kit SK170-12C1 replaces these belts and includes shoulder harnesses. It fits a 330 2+2 reasonably well and had a period look and feel appropriate to the car. The belts are not retractable, but instead the shoulder harness clips to the lap belt as the picture shows.
The belt hardware has 3/8" holes, the Ferrari 7/16" fine thread SAE bolts. So the holes must be enlarged. We first tried to drill them out, but their steel is very tough and the drill bit just dulled. So we ended up using a little Dremel grinding wheel to enlarge the holes. We were lucky to have the original Ferrari bolts attaching the belts to the floor. These have a short shoulder at the end caps. Their use for the shoulder belts thus enables them to rotate on their mounts as described below. To use them, the holes in the shoulder belt hardware must be enlarged to a little over 1/2".
The shoulder belts attach to a threaded hole hole in the B-pillar just behind the seats. The hole is covered with the little leather covered cap shown.
The cap is removed by unscrewing it, not prying it out as was first attempted! If the car has been re-upholstered, the leather covered panels may have to be removed to find the hole. This requires first removing of the seats to get at their screws. After the holes have been revealed, they must be cleaned out. Tape may partially cover them that must be removed, and they should be carefully cleaned with a 7/16" fine SAE tap. Using the original bolts enables the shoulder harness to swivel. This was done by using three 7/16" stainless steel washers, with two of them bored out to a little over 1/2". This makes the sandwich: Bolt, enlarged washer, shoulder harness hardware, enlarged washer, original washer. The result attached to the B-pillar is shown here:
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New 7/16" fine thread SAE bolts and stainless steel washers were used to attach the seat belts. The attachment to the tunnel has other washers under the belt hardware to make it fit without digging a hole into the leather. |
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The attachment on the other side also has additional washers underneath the belt hardware. When new floor mats are installed on the car, this attachment will be hidden under the mat, and the belt will emerge through a slit. |
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The resulting assembly is shown here with the way in which the shoulder belt clips in on the right.
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If you do install one of these sets, be sure to leave the little tags on the belts that say that they were installed by an FAA approved technician.
The final touch is to glue Ferrari lapel pins (found on ebay for a few dollars) to the pull handles.
I've seen old seat belts that have had the small Pininfarina/Ferrari crossed flags (from the ashtray cover) glued on them. However, you will pay more for the flags than for the seat belts.