Seat Belts

Here's some pictures of an original set of seat belts, courtesy of Tim Waller (SN 5769).  It's interesting that one end was attached to the shoulder harness mounting point while the other was attached on the tunnel.  So this was more like a shoulder harness without a lap belt.

 

My car came with just a pair of lap belts for the front seats (uninstalled).  One of these had a hole in the belt that was about half of the width, so I didn't think that it would be of much use in an accident.  I did have two bolts with nylon washers sized to allow a belt end to swivel on the bolt when installed.  This would have only been necessary if the one end was bolted in the shoulder harness attachment hole.  My panels didn't have any plugs to cover that hole either.  So I suspect that mine had been installed just like Tim's were.  I guess that your head wouldn't hit the windshield, but you might get strangled as you submerged under the belt though.

I replaced the bad front belt with just an extra lap belt from my 240Z.  The rear seats didn't come with any body fittings to attach a seat belt to.  So I ended up getting large washers and nuts that fit standard seat belt bolts.  Then I drilled holes in the body underneath at the sides of each rear seat.  The seat belts then bolted down to these holes with the washer and nut (welded together) on the underside of the body. 

The fittings ended up to the side and underneath each seat, so you just see the belts coming up from the crack.

I did want 3 point retractable shoulder harness and combined seat belts for the front.  There was a attachment point for the shoulder harness just underneath the rear quarter windows.  The other two attachment points were in the floor and on the transmission tunnel.  The ones on the end on the tunnel and where the shoulder harness swivel attached were fine.  However, the floor attachment posed a problem.  That bolt holds the end of the lap belt and also the retractor for the shoulder harness.  If I bolted the retractor flat to the floor it would take up a big chunk of the rear floor (and there's not a lot to spare in the 2+2).  Mounting it vertically seemed the way to go.  But in order to do that, I would have to make a strong bracket that would bolt flat to the floor, but allow the retractor to mount vertically.

 

Seat Belt Retractor Brackets

In order to put the retractor out of the way as much as possible, the brackets actually had an extra jog to conform to the floor and side.  These are made out of 1/4" thick stainless steel 2" wide with TIG welding on the front and back of each joint.  When your life might be at stake, one doesn't want to take chances.  The hole is where the bracket bolts to the floor.  The bolt holds the retractor to the bracket and is tapped in the stainless steel (boy did that take a long time!).

Here's how they look installed

The final thing to do on the seat belts was to replace the push button picture with something more appropriate.  I decided to use the crossed flags that are on the console.  After taking a digital picture and doing some editing, I printed up small pictures that I stuck on each button.

 

Lowell Brown went a different route to install shoulder harnesses in his 330 GT (SN 8855).  Click here to see the way he went about it.

Another 330 GT owner installed a 3 point retractable style seat belt similar to mine, but put the retractor inside the dogleg panel.  You can see the plastic slot that the retractable part of the belt fits into.  Quite a neat installation.  I don't know what he mounted the retractor to though.

Dave Michael (SN 7895) installed three point retractable seat belts for the rear seats in his 330 GT.  The retractor is installed in the trunk on the small slope near the bulkhead. The belt runs straight up through the package shelf steel panel, over a plastic guide, then horizontally under the leather shelf cover, then through a guide, up through the leather cover and over the seat back.

If I were doing this, I would consider putting the retractors in the speaker wells with appropriate bracing, using smaller speakers if necessary. That would eliminate some of the work and the retractors would not be in the way in the trunk. However, it would mean having to remove the fuel tank for access to outside of the speaker wells.

Since the fuel tank sits below the speaker wells, another choice would be to mount the retractors high up on the bulkhead in the trunk. That would get them out of the way and still allow for normal speakers. This might also work on earlier cars that don't have speaker wells.

Either way, it is a very neat installation for three point belts in the rear seats.