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Old December 6th, 2018, 06:58 AM
  #1  
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Seat belts

hello all, Thanks for letting me into your group. My father recently passed and I've inherited a couple of cars from him. One is a '56 Super 88 four door sedan. This car was his "baby". We spent the last 10 years doing a frame-off restoration on it, and it really means a lot to me to carry on dads tradition with my son and nephew. The issue is my son is 5,nephew is 4. My wife insists that if they come cruising/shows with me, they need to be in car seats. Has anyone installed aftermarket seat belts into these classics? A Google search brings a lot of companies that honestly don't look that safe, more like a Harbor Freight ratchet straps. LOL Thanks for any advice and happy Oldsmobiling!
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Old December 6th, 2018, 08:19 AM
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Welcome to the site. Don't go cheap when adding seatbelts to your Olds. You should consider adding gussets to the body where you mount the seatbelts.

Here are some seatbelt suppliers:

https://www.retrobelt.com/

https://www.wescoperformance.com/seatbelts.html

https://www.seatbeltsplus.com/
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Old December 6th, 2018, 08:32 AM
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As noted, there are a lot of vendors selling DOT-approved aftermarket seat belts. The body mounting is what matters. The factory used attach points that passed through reinforcements in the floor pan - the thin floor pan sheet metal is NOT sufficiently strong by itself. Typically the mounting points for the front belts pass through the floor pan crossmembers, which provide sufficient reinforcement. The back seat belts will usually need to be mounted in an unreinforced part of the floor pan under the back seat. You can buy aftermarket reinforcement plates with radiused edges for these locations.


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