I need to work on the passenger seat belt. What's the trick to getting the upholstery behind the seats off?

The Backpad is held by screws at the bottom and 2 tabs at the top. Unscrew the screws and push the whole backpad up out of tabs

Ignore

I gave WRONG INFORMATION

Ah.............


Don't you pust down on the backpad to get it out?

Just did that last night.

4 screws and lift up. there are 4 (2 per side) u brackets that 4 tabs fit into. 2 of my tabs had almost been pulled out of the back pad due to po and myself pulling forward instead of up.

You lift up first to get the backpad off the ledge that is at the bottom. Lift up and then slip your fingers under the bootom and pull out, that should loosen the bottom of the pad. Then you slide the backpad down and towards the front of the car to release the upper tabs. Just pulling up will just rip out the upper tabs.

dont forget to remove engine lid release knob also before trying to remove the backpad.

When you say work on the passenger seat belt... what do you mean?

The passenger seatbelt grabs the belt unless you pull super slow at the perfect angle.

Good luck working on the seat belt if you are opening it up. The coil spring in there SUCKS.

I would not recommend opening it up. The spring is very dangerous when the tension is released by opening the housing and the chances of it being usable afterwords is pretty small. You are better off sending it to be rebuilt or do a search here on seat belt tightening.

Don't pull up, or straight back, on the back pad unless you want to be re-attaching the tabs onto the structure of the pad. If any water has gotten to the back-side of the pad, the material will be weaker and relatively easy to break.

The bottom of the pad slides forward (remove the seats, remove the engine pull-knob and the plastic "escutcheon" that goes around the cable, remove the four screws that go through the pad into the firewall) and then slide the whole pad downward about an inch. It will come away from the firewall at that point.

Opening up the thicker side of the retractor is lots of fun! It's a wonderful way to acquire new scars, especially on your hands and your face!! The outward-facing edge of the spring is really sharp. After it cut up my hands, it cut up the pair of leather work gloves I put on (closing the barn door after the horse was gone).

Working on it can be done if you're careful, but the potential down-sides are pretty steep.

You can extend the belt the whole way and wash it in Woolite or similar stuff. That can help. If you know for a fact which side the spring is on, you can open up the other side and clean that up as well. But if you don't know, treat it like a hand-grenade and the side covers as the pin.

--DD

It seems like every time this question is asked, most of the answers say to pull up. Be careful! The bottom pulls forward and the top slides down.