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Tips
Tips

Seat Belt Saga

Brian N.

Jedi Hopeful
Offline
OK, Now I am happy with the seat belts BCS sold me. Installation is complete, the inertial retractors are properly adjusted, and all is fine.

A few tips:

The bracket holes were all located and drilled from inside the car. The latch tail bolt eyes were located near the rear of the prop shaft tunnel about half the way up. Access was via removing the rear seat cushions. Easy.

The front clevis anchors fit on the floor between the seat and the sill. There is just enough room. The floor has a formed low trough which these fit nicely into. Drill one hole. Drop a bolt through. This allows the bracket to be the template for the second hole. No brainer.

The retractors were located as high on the flat part of the inner wheel well as possible. It is kind of in the way of any poor soul who would sit in the back seat (but I cannot imagine that). They are mounted a a slight angle to allow the belt to go over the shoulder but not be pulling up on the tonneau bar.

And finally, if you have not already tried it, use a soldering iron to melt away and seal the fibers of the carpet where you want to drill a hole. This keeps the drill from catching and winding up a lot of carpet yarn. Some carpet seems to have a pretty high melting temp, so the soldering iron trick may not always work. But usually it does. Did for may, anyway.

Also, 1/8th in pilot holes were drilled first. Then the larger hole for the bolt.

All seems well with the project. And one other thing I noticed, the seats were lacking the wood strips under them. Does anyone know the size, especially the appropriate thickness? I am going to make a set and install this weekend. But I bet the driver side over the muffler is a pain to work with, since the nuts are right above the muffler.
 
Brian, I purchased new wood strips from Moss this past summer with all the proper holes, etc, ready for installation and they were not expensive if I remember right. Ship two day and you'll have them for the weekend. To install on the drivers side, just disconnect the back tail pipe mount and the one near the muffler. The muffler and tail pipe will hang down just enough that you can get your ratchet on the the nuts. I put something under the tail pipe so it wouldn't drop down too far and put strain on the pipe connections. It's really pretty easy. mac
 
<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Brian N.:

the seats were lacking the wood strips under them. Does anyone know the size, especially the appropriate thickness? .
<hr></blockquote>

5/16 thick plus a thin metal spacer. They go on the floor, the carpet is cutout around.
D
 
One tip I heard about is adding a "lift" to the front of the seats by adding thickness to the wood inserts. In that way the seats tilt back slightly providing a little more comfort than the straight up position.
cheers.gif
 
Thanks for the tilt tip. This sounds like a great idea. The car has pedal extensions, which Linda needs, but that makes the driving position for me rather marginal.

Both seats are out right now, as I have the tunnel off the transmission. The seat brackets are missing some studs, so I am in the process of welding new ones on and doing a thorough clean/paint/lube to the seat bracekts before reinstalling. Putting them on some wedges should be no problem.

BTW, here's a BIG Healey:

https://www.beachcitygas.com/sg2big.jpg

(just kidding!)
jester.gif
 
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