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Posted by: flipb Jun 29 2017, 06:17 AM

Felt accomplished after this fix last night and haven't posted in a while.

My seatbelt retractors have been difficult as long as i've owned my 914 (8 years), but have gotten worse over time. I tried cleaning the belts, which seemed to improve action on the passenger side but didn't make much difference on the driver's side. In addition, my mechanic recommended new seat belts for the safety aspect... who knows how 40+ year old weave would behave in an accident.

So I ordered custom belts from seatbeltplanet.com. They arrived yesterday and within a couple hours of getting home from work, I had the whole job done. I'd never even removed the seats before, so this one felt good.

In addition, my '74 still had the ignition interlock in place. New seatbelts meant I couldn't keep it functioning, so I found the instructions in an old post on here to bridge the wires and by-pass the interlock.

The seatbelt swap was surprisingly simple. The only minor complication (besides the interlock wiring) is the protective bracket over the parking brake assembly, which blocks the driver's side lower attachment point. The bracket removes with 2 screws.

I celebrated a job well done with a sunset drive in perfect weather.

So glad for this community - got the recommendation for seatbeltplanet and the instructions for bypassing ignition interlock on here. Just a reminder that while I haven't posted much lately, i'm still getting value from this forum.

Posted by: mepstein Jun 29 2017, 07:36 AM

Posted by: PanelBilly Jun 29 2017, 08:35 AM

Remember this feeling. There's going to be projects that you need to do over and over again trying to get it right.

All evens out if the karma thing works in your favor