Retrofitting Shoulder harness belts in a 69

[poolguru]

I am looking for info on putting in shoulder restraint belts in my 69.Is this difficult to do and where might I purchase these items?I have been searching to see if I can find the info myself and to see if lap belt only systems are legal for this year car in California.Any help is appreciated.Thanks!

[TobyB]

in my 69, they attach behind you, on the inside of the rear quarter.

They work fine.

But they are non- retractible (spaghetti?)

For Jenn's 70, with similar mounting, we managed to get

320 parts to work with that lower pivot.

Legally? Who knows? If you install parts of later

origin in an intelligent manner, you have good ground to stand on.

'It's the best that can be done.'

t

[davida]

I just installed a 3 point non-retractable belt from gotbelts.com in my '68. It fit well and looks pretty good for $40.00.

[dlhoovler]

What I did in my early '71, which sounds like the same system, was based on what Mike Self did about 25 years earlier on his '69. He adapted late-model '02 retractable belts to fit with the pivots under the side window on the '68-early '71 cars. The basic method is to mount the reel with some big fender washers on a hole drilled in the riser panel under the front of the rear seat. Then the pivot goes at the original top mounting, and the other end of the belt goes at the other original mounting on the rocker panel.

It seems to work well, if a bit sluggish retracting due to the belt's rubbing on the front of the rear seat--a piece of leather glued there can help save wear. The mounting method puts the stress parallel to the surface of that riser panel, not perpendicular to it, so it seems pretty solid. Of course, it's not been crash-tested in a frontal collision, so it's your choice and your risk. The hole in the riser panel should be nearly invisible due to the carpet if you ever decide to go back original.

Another option I've recently seen may be retractable belts without a pivot, which are available at the gotbelts.com site mentioned in another post. If those retractors would work properly when mounted on the original upper mounting point, that would seem to be a better choice that didn't involve any drilling in these earlier cars. You'd have to contact the company to ask how the retractors would work in that situation. If you do, please post here so others can benefit from your research!

Hope that helps!

-Dave[/url]

[JohnC]

See the article in the FAQ.

http://www.bmw2002faq.com/content/view/27/32/

I followed this procedure with a couple of minor modifications. It will take a full day to install, plus a couple of hours prep. The best upgrade I've done...