Auto to Manual Seat Belt Swap

Tools needed for the job

Stockets 8mm 10mm 12mm 14mm and 17mm
Screw Drivers
Trim removal tool
Tap and Die Set
Welder (if at all possible)
Wire Wheel
Drill Bits

Material and Hardware

12" piece of flat stock steel
7/16-20 Nuts (8pcs.)
Flat Washers (4pcs.)
Paint (to spray raw metal)

Remove Seats and all panels (4 12mm bolts)
Rear view mirror (firmly pull down on mirror)
Sun Visors (flat head screw driver)
Map Light and Dome Light (2 8mm nuts)
Sunroof rubber Trim
Remove the roof pad
Note: using the trim tool remove the 4 plastic push pins and plastic washer and philps head screw driver.

Remove the 9 10mm bolts off the auto belt track and motor and place of to the side.

Next your going prep for the installing of the manual belts
For the upper shoulder portion of the belt your going have a hole for this. ( you can do 1 of 2 things using your 7/16 tap and tap the hole or using a dremal cut a hole above the mounting hole. This is so you can weld the nut right behind the hole.)

For the retracting portion of the belt your going to use the wire wheel to clean and prep to weld a tab to bolt the bottom of the retracting belt. Weld so it’s solid piece and safe
Cut a 5in piece of flat stock
Weld the flat stock to line up with the bottom of the retracing belt
Now Remove the 2 17mm bolts out of the lap belt (you can bolt the bottom and the belt to the hole closer to the front of car)

Weld 2 nuts to each other and now to the washer (steel 50 cent piece size)
Now you can weld the mount to the hump on the inside next to the emergency brake.
Bolt the buckle to your mount

Note: your can drill a hole in the hump and weld the mount you made to the underneath of the car.

Paint all the raw metal so it doesn’t rust.

Remove the shoulder belt and put your car back together

Will have pics as soon as I can get the Photobucket code to work properly…

I have posted detailed pictures before of the conversion, and have another set that will be going in my db1 when I get time. If you do no have access to a welder, and the proper knowledge this is not something you should be attempting. You cannot just tap the upper b pillar location and have any reasonable expectation that the mounting bolt will not pull out. That is not an option worth risking your life over. The way to do the upper mount and the receiver mount on the exhaust tunnel is to weld the nut to a plate, drill the holes large enough to accept the nut, and then weld the plate to the structure. You also have to fabricate a bracket for the recoil assembly and that has to be welded as well. I actually wrecked the first car I did this too and the seatbelts functioned as expected. If you cut corners on your seatbelts there are no guarantees. Do not encourage others to jeopardize their safety with short cuts.

I have also seen where the receiver was mounted to the seat rail which is ok if done properly. The reasoning for that is that if the floor pan crumples the belt floats with the seat and doesnt crush your hips.

You do realize that everything you said that is “safe” I did? Fab a bottom mount out of flat stock of steel? Bolted to the car top and bottom of the recoil portion and fab a mount for the exhaust tunnel which you can unbolt at anytime in the factory location!? So don’t tell me I am encouraging others to jeopardize their safety!!! Also the B pillar on my car has 1/4 of a inch to thread plus another half inch steel bolt welded to a piece of steel about 6inches long…I do know for fact won’t pull out of the b pillar in a car crash!

The receiver is to long to just bolt to the seat!!! You can get the proper measurements to make the mount for the receiver

To mount to the seat rail requires fabrication obviously. Ive seen it done using shorter receivers of the same buckle type. It read as if you were implying that welding was optional, and I do not see any pictures of yours to reference. Maybe I will try to dig up the pictures from last time I did it. I would certainly not try to tap the sheet metal by itself though. You can always upload pictures to here. I am not implying you did it unsafely as I have nothing to go by, but the installation is not really feasible without minor welding and fab.

Wish I could upload pics but Photobucket isn’t work on this site or vice versa but it says exactly I welded my swap in…

Apparently Photobucket started charging for 3rd party hosting when posted on forums and stuff. I don’t know the details since I don’t use that site but I heard some others complaining about it on another board. I believe you’ll need to either pay to use Photobucket or switch to a new service. Personally I was never a fan of Photobucket and have always used Flickr. It has it’s downsides too but overall I’m fairly happy with it, but then again I pay for it but I think their free version is still good, just not as much monthly bandwidth and not as much sorting options.

Colin funny you say because all my pics have been deleted but not buy me and I did read on another forum that they doing that just today. I will be removing my interior again to take pics of the install,

Here for the pictures

I can’t get any to load