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Rear seatbelts - My how to

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mattm123 View Drop Down
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    Posted: 26 Jul 17 at 15:35

It took me a long time to work out what the best way of getting 2 x 3 point seat belts into the back of my T3 Westfalia so I thought I’d share my learnings in case it's of use to someone else.

 

The easy seatbelt number 1-

 

with my van being LHD this is the one on the passenger side of the van, also with my van being a Westie the mounting points are all there to do this. Brickwerks do a nice nice kit and a good setp by step guide which uses the origional mounting points and also has a fabricated bracket for mounting the inertia reel to the 3 x mounting holes in the rear behind the R&R bed.

 

Unfortunately Brickwerks were out of stock when I needed to buy my rear belts so i ended up getting this belt from JustKampers. The belt they sell is a Securon inertia with a variety of universal fittings for all sorts of situations. What this Securon kit (JustKampers) doesn't have is a way of mounting the inertia reel off of all three chassis mounting points!  

 

So to get this kit to work like the brickwerks one i did the following

1. Drill out the centre chassis mounting hole to take the standard seatbelt bolt

2. I had in the garage some 3mm metal strapping from some previous building work, i drilled three holes in this ( two small at each end and a larger one in the middle) and then mounted this over the three chassis fitting holes 

3. I then used the short fitting plate, supplied with the kit to mount the inertia reel to the chassis and the now attached 3mm plate. ( easier by far to get the Brickwerks kit!)

https://photos.app.goo.gl/32lpQ8zNtM6K6fke2

 

The tricky seatbelt number 2-

 

From the research i did i could find 3 methods of putting the seatbelt in on the side with the cupboards:

 

1. Use the factory standard mounting points as per the passenger side but then cut holes in the cupboards and route the seatbelt though it. To me this seems like a pretty bad idea as the seatbelt routing is going to be quite winding and if you are in a crash the belt is going to try and "straighten out", applying force to the cupboard internals, when the ply or fixings fails the seatbelt is going to achieve its aim of running straight from the reel to the shoulder of the passenger and the passenger is going to lurch forward by a considerable distance. 

 

 

2. Mount the inertia reel under the rock and roll bed - This one i tried and then removed immediately when I realised the following. The problem with this method is that although the reel is mounted nicely to the chassis under the bum of the passenger, the belt comes around the back of the bench seat meaning that in a crash the force is transferred to the back of the seat, in a more modern car you can have seats which are designed to take this force, the back of the rock and roll bed in a T3 is almost certainly not designed for this!

 

3. Mount the seatbelt reel the top of the tailgate - Getting some information on how this works was hard, this was my starting point, this company will fit them for you and they have this information on their website 

 

http://www.quickfitsbs.com/PDFs/vw_camper.pdf

 

But its not that obvious what you need to do to get it to work, so this is what I did.

 

1. Go to a seatbelt manufacturer, I went to Fdts-seatbelts.co.uk , Sue is the lady that runs it and she was brilliant! they have everything in the world seatbelt related and a lot of knowledge. I ordered from her the following:

 

1x Horizontal inertia belt with 3.2 Meter of webbing onto which she put 

2x Narrow buckles which fit into the original lap buckle receivers (if you've done the first seatbelt with Securon you'll have a spare)

2 x metal space (to be cut)

1x narrow mounting plate

1x bolt and nut

2x Plastic trim pieces to cover the holes you need to make in the overhead cupboard

 

https://photos.app.goo.gl/gfWJSVvYnC7QKpRN2

 

2. Take the rear overhead cupboard out ( really easy with just 5 x bolts ), you need to do this so you have access to drill the hole in the tailgate lip, as the tailgate stops you getting access from the outside

 

3. Drill a hole from the inside to out to take the bolt that you’re going to put the seatbelt reel on, this hole will drill through the inside skin, through the void and out the thick horizontal section in the tailgate gully

 

https://photos.app.goo.gl/PtqpukhkHKRia7LH3

https://photos.app.goo.gl/dJPN974goK3xX9GW2

 

4. Angles are going to be the problem now, the inertia reel needs to sit horizontal to work but the plate and bolt on the outside will only sit nice and flat at an angle that is too acute to get the inertia reel onto. So what I did was drill out the narrow mounting plate slightly so that i had a bit of play in the angle which the bolt sits at.

 

Then i created 3 x angled spacers from the 2 metal spacers, they cut ok with a hacksaw

 

https://photos.app.goo.gl/N7ILxGTHFajhWQdr1

 

1 x spacer for the outside - this is a really thin wedge to help pick up the angel created between the outside bolt and plate

 

2 x internal spaces - these are two halves from the same cut which will set the reel at horizontal

 

I then painted the outside pieces, applied a liberal amount of RTV silicone on the outside and bolted it all together, adding another plate to the inside between the van and the angled spacer

https://photos.app.goo.gl/h4gZP3ElcucMYVmh2

https://photos.app.goo.gl/cDrFAIG6RhUnEoLU2


Ok so with that done all that is left to do is cut out the two holes in the overhead cupboard one at the back right next to the inertia reel to allow the belt to pass through the other on the bottom face of the cupboard an inch or two back from the front face, put the seatbelt through, put the plastic trim pieces into the holes so it looks good, bolt the two receivers into the factory mounting points under the R&R bed.

 

DONE!

 



Edited by mattm123 - 26 Jul 17 at 16:17
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clift_d View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote clift_d Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 26 Jul 17 at 16:28
The other option is to take both belts from the same side, similar to this image on the Seatbelt Services site



One belt would be as per the Brickwerks kit. The other belt would be an installation with two receivers at the seat anchors, a belt with two tongues and the inertia reel and seat belt pillar loop on the rear pillar adjacent to the tailgate.
1988 1.6TD Westfalia Club Joker syncro
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