Just wanted to give a shout out to Paul S (PRS914-6) who somehow has the ability to tighten the spring inside your 914 seatbelt.

I just had mine done, and they really work much better than before. Not sure if mine were worse than ordinary, but mine started where one wouldn't pull-out without locking every 3 inches and the other not retracting at all.

Only $20 per pair plus shipping, with prompt turnaround. A cheap fix if your seatbelts are annoying you.

Steve
74' 2.0

Yeah, 'normal' 914 seat belts are SUCH A PITA! And $20 a pair is too cheap to ignore.

Dang, that's cheap! Where can I get more info about this?

Steve, I'm glad that worked out well for you...

If anyone wants theirs done just PM me. The belts must still be pliable to work properly. If the fabric is crusty hard, don't bother

If you pull the cover off and the spring flies out, it will cost you more for me to put it back in....

Paul isn't kidding about cracking the seatbelt open...Don't do it. I rebuilt my entire car, and after several hours of trying, couldn't get the damn thing back together. This is one to send the the professionals from the start.

If you've opened yours up, buy a used set and have it wound by Paul for $20.

If you want to just re-wind the springs on your belts, it is really pretty easy. Just remove the unit, and pull the belt entirely out of the spool. You will notice that the belt goes through a slot in the center of the shaft on the spool. Take a small dull screw driver or something similar, and push the belt back through the slot. You will notice that the belt has a loop sewn on the end of it, and that it contains a pin inside the loop. When tension is placed on the belt, it pulls the loop into the shaft, and wedges it tight. It is not necessary to remove any of the covers on the ends of the belt assembly.

I used a small clamp or small vise grip pliars to hold the shaft so that it does not spin backwards, as it is still under spring tension. Push the belt out, remove the small pin from the belt loop, and then pull the belt completely out of the shaft. Then, use something like a pair of small screw drivers to wind the shaft a few turns tighter against the spring force. To do this, insert a screw drive into the slot, then remove the clamp. Rotate the shaft with the screw driver about 180 degrees, and then insert a second screw driver into the slot from the opposite side. Do this until you get the spring a little tighter. Then clamp the shaft to keep it from unwinding while you re-install the belt.

To reassemble, just insert the belt back into the slot, making sure that you insert it the same way that it came out. The notch on the slot should be on the opposite side from where you insert the belt. Then put the pin back in the belt loop, and just pull on the belt so that it pulls the loop and the pin back into the slot. Remove the clamp, and let the spring wind up the belt. If you don't like the tension, just do this again. It only takes a few minutes.

The photo below shows the shaft with a clamp. Note that I had the cover off the latch mechanism side, but you do not want to remove this to tighten the spring. I had mine off to make sure the latching mechanism was in good shape. Note, taht if you remove the opposite side, the spring will jump out, and you will have a mess. JoeO

While your idea is simple and easy, it has limitations if the spring is weak. In another thread I stated that I needed your waist size. The reason is that I remove the cover and tighten the actual spring itself much further than that method to the point where the entire belt can not be pulled all the way out before spring bind occurs. In other words, the belt probably has 2-4 wraps around before spring bind occurs for a loss of a few inches of length. This loss is no big deal for the average waist guy though, but gives nice firm belt retraction that even new belts don't have.

If the above method does not give decent spring tension, there is no choice but to pull the cover and tighten internally which is what I do.