Klayfish

So I just purchased my '65 Delta 88. Working in car insurance claims, I've seen countless wrecked cars. I'm a big believer in seat belts. The car has lap only belts up front and nothing in the back. This car needs to be able to transport my wife and 3 little kids. We're only using it for cruise nights and local ice cream parlor trips, so it won't be driven more than once a week, if that.

Has anyone ever installed 3 or 4 point belts in their car? The door pillar looks thin, I'm not sure it can hold a shoulder harness. On the other hand, I understand the risks of mounting 4 point harnesses to the floor (pulling downward in an accident, creating spinal compression). Anyone come up with a viable solution to this? My thought would be maybe putting bucket seats up front from a u-pull it yard and running my 4 point harness through the back of that? Not sure about the back seat.

henryk8398

I added modern shoulder belts to my 72 LeMans. Of course, the provisions were already there, so it was pretty easy. Check these sites out:

http://www.seatbeltplanet.com/
http://www.gotbelts.com/
http://www.seatbeltsolutions.com/

I would suggest a 3-point harness. You can have a mounting bracket welded to your roof where you want it to pivot. You would have to remove the headliner (at least partially). Not familiar with the 4-point harness using a bucket seat, but that sounds like it would work.

Installing rear lap belts should be easy. Retrofit kits come with large, thick grade 8 washers and bolts. You would have to drill the floorboard. The washers help prevent the bolt from pulling through in an impact.

I would search around some more, I remember back in 2003-2004 a website where they had some retrofit how-tos. Search around, it's been done.

Measure twice, drill once, and use red loctite. Good luck!