tmbrennan

I have a '71 Cutlass Supreme. I have front lap and shoulder belts (separate receptacles) and rear lap belts. The wife wants rear shoulder belts if I'm going to put the kids in the back seat.

I was thinking maybe I could anchor a really long "male" belt to the outer anchor point (where the lap belt "male" is) and anchor another "female" receptacle to the inner point (where the existing lap belt female is now). So, the shoulder belt would run up behind and over the top of the rear seat, cross over the passenger, and latch to the female end.

This would give me a set-up similar to the front where there are separate receptacles for the lap and shoulder belts. I'm just not sure that this set-up would provide a proper, safe angle for the shoulder belts - or that the anchor points/bolts currently in place will accomodate additional belts anchored to them.

Anybody done this? Thoughts?

svnt442

Oh boy.

I know it's all about safety these days, but without some redesign there really isn't a good place to be anchoring shoulder belts in the back seat. Not only would the anchor point need to be sturdy enough, but you have to have the angle correct. You'd also want them to be retracting belts on top of it. Do you really think the kids would sit still with the shoulder belts you have in the front seat? Somehow I doubt it. I remember as a kid I had a bad enough time with the non adjustable lap belts as it was, let alone having to deal with non adjustable shoulder belts.
I just don't think it's a viable modification without throwing a lot of money at it.
Don't get me wrong here. I'm not saying it can't be done, just you need to really think about weather it should be done.

And to be honest most cars didn't have rear shoulder belts until the last few years.

MJAKS462

would probably be cheaper to put them in car seats if they are not teen agers. Just hope that there friends dont see them if they are like 10 to 12 years old
my sons car seat does not use a shoulder belt.
My wife would not let my kids in anything that I have worked on , LOL

Bluevista

Rear seat shoulder belts were and option in '71.
They look the same the same as front seat shoulder belt and mounts , the two male ends bolt with the lap belt anchors on the floor, no middle passenger shoulder belts, see '71 Fisher Body manual illustration below.
Looks pretty straightforward, a set of front belts would probably work since you adjust the length at the buckle, that lower anchor plate it bolts to is all you would need I think.
Kids don't need to move around that much, better off that they don't, you get a hand width chest slack?

jaunty75

This sounds dangerous. The anchor point is still at the lap level, not at the shoulder level. You're essentially counting on the seatback to provide the strength to keep the anchor point above the person's shoulder, and that will certainly not happen. The seat will collapse in a microsecond in the event of an accident.

Look at any car WITH shoulder belts, front or rear, and note where they're anchored. Unless you can find some place up high in the rear to anchor them, you're probably making the situation more dangerous rather than more safe.

Personally, I think your wife is being a little unreasonable. The world had front seat belts for years before it had front shoulder belts, and it had rear seat belts for many years before it had rear shoulder belts. Riding in the back seat with properly adjusted and functioning seat belts is quite safe. Having shoulder belts would be nice, of course, but so would side-curtain airbags and a hundred other things. Where do you draw the line? It's dangerous to walk out your front door each morning, too, but we all do it.

svnt442

This is a new one on me. I have never heard of that, let alone SEEN one with them installed. I can't imagine that many, if ANY were ordered.



Here, here!!

rocketraider

Concur. If you install shoulder belts that are not engineered to work with the body structure of the car, you are creating a greater hazard than you would have had without them.

That is exactly why I won't install lap belts in any old car that did not have some form of anchorage engineered into the structure of the car. Running a bolt thru the floor with no reinforcement to keep it from pulling thru the floor under a stress load creates a false sense of security if not an outright dangerous situation. And I do not consider a big washer to be structural reinforcement.

Tell your wife to quit worrying so damn much. Odds are when the kids get old enough to drive themselves they'll unbuckle their belts as soon as they're out of her sight. Seat belt laws aren't designed so much to increase safety as they are to appease insurance company lobbyists anyway, and to give a bored LEO another reason to mess with you and raise a little revenue thru fines, and increase insurance company profits from points on your driving record.

It's one of those common sense things that should not have a law or fine attached. Any law with a fine incorporated into it is designed for one thing and one thing only, and that's revenue.

jaunty75

This is hugely excellent point. I've often wondered if it's even legal to install seatbelts in a car that never had them originally. A hole through the relatively thin sheetmetal of the floor is not enough. A factory installation has those thick, wide nuts welded to the floor to both spread the load and to give something more substantial to thread the bolt into. The big washer might actually help spread the load, but it does nothing to increase the strength of the attachment itself.

tmbrennan

Well, the factory shoulder belt thing is new on me, too. I don't racell seeing anchor points there, but I'll be checking it out this weekend. After thinking about it, I do agree that "engineering" a solution on my own may create a more hazardous situation. If my car has the anchor points, the factory installation seems like the logical way to go.

I did try the kids car seats. The kids are 10 years old (twins) but they are small. So, the belts on their car seats do extend enough for them. But the car seats are too damn big - the tops scrape the headliner in the back.

I also thought of a 4 point harness, since it would distribute the force across both shoulders equally, eliminating the risk of an improperly installed shoulder belt. Wesco makes one that's actually a 3-point harness. It anchors to the 2 existing floor points and the shoulder belts form a Y which is anchored to a new point you drill between the existing floor anchors. This does anchor the shoulders at the floor, rather than at a higher point, but maybe since the force is distributed across both shoulders, it's acceptable as opposed to a single shoulder belt.

If I don't have factory points up under the sail panels, I'll probably go the harness route.

Yes, the wife is a bit unreasonable, but I can't imagine what kind of shape I'd be in if I didn't heed her advice occasionally!

tmbrennan

BlueVista - you were right on. There are indeed rear shoulder belt anchor points built into the body/frame under the package tray. It's the same hole spacing as the front shoulder belt anchor. The holes are about 8 inches in from the sail panel on each side and angled slightly so a shoulder belt would have the correct angle to cross over the passenger.

All I need is a set of shoulder belts (just like up front) an dthe reinforcing plate that would mount from below in the trunk. I can use the "female" from the rear middle lap belt - and steal the middle lap belt from the front seat center since nobody will be sitting in those positions anyway.

Rather than modifyng my interior in any way, I'll just have to cut the package tray - which was already on the chopping block to install speakers. Many thanks!!!!!

stevengerard

they were an option in 70 as well, one which I have never seen in a back seat. But I have seen shoulder belts for a convertible in one other car besides mine, they were available just rarely ordered.

joe_padavano

They were an option as far back as 1966. Check the Fisher Body Manual.

As for "factory reinforcements", there aren't any. Look at the drawing above more closely. Note that there is a two-hole oval plate that goes underneath the package shelf. The plate sits in a stamped sheet metal reinforcing channel that is part of the package shelf. You would need to replicate the oval plate to use this design.

tmbrennan

All the fuss about rear shoulder belts - and safety gear in general, raises interesting food for thought.

I think that the traffic safety regulators and insurance companies are now realizing that they've created somewhat of an inverse problem - the "safer" we make cars, the less safe we make drivers. People seem quite confident that their belts, air bags, side curtains, etc make them invincible.

So, they drive faster, less defensively, and take more risks than they likely would take if they didn't have that sense of security.

Makes you wonder... if we took away all the belts and airbages, wouldn't people be more careful?? Imagine making drivers responsible for their own safety - and the safety of others? Crazy huh?!!

jaunty75

Good points. Actually, what I think has happened is that airbags have made people who are not inclined to begin with to wear seat belts even less likely to do so because they figure the airbag will protect them.

I have this one friend who is about 40 years old who is "normal" in every other way but who has the strangest aversion to wearing seat belts. He is convinced that, if he were in an accident, the seat belts would prevent him from being "thrown clear," as he puts it, make it more difficult for him to get out of the car should it go under water, or just in general make it more difficult for him to escape from the car if he wanted to get out of it quickly before it caught fire or something.

The rest of us are always pointing out to him that the percentages are much more in his favor if he is wearing a belt, but he won't buy it, and I'm sure airbags only reinforce his conviction. However, having said all this, he still wears a seat belt pretty much all the time because he doesn't want to get ticketed by a cop, which he hates even more.

joe_padavano

That's just evolution in action...

Seriously, he's watched too much television. Accidents involving fire constitute about one half of one percent of all auto accidents. I read where doctors are blaming Hollywood for increasing the number of paralysis cases after auto accidents. This vision of exploding cars has people pulling accident victims out of cars before properly stabilizing their neck and spine, due to the unfounded fear of fire.

As for being "thrown clear", well, what usually happens is that you get thrown clear... ...clear through the windshield! I have one vivid memory of all my trips to Pick-Your-Part in Wilmington, CA. That is the vision of SO MANY cars with circular fracture patterns in the windshield, right in front of the driver and passenger... There was another accident near my home a few years ago where a woman slid on some ice and hit a tree. She was not wearing a seatbelt, went through the windshield, and died because she cracked her skull on that tree!!! The other thing is that in many, many cases the victim gets ejected partly from the car and is killed when the car rolls over him.

Again, evolution in action.

jaunty75

Too late to remove his genes from the gene pool. He has two kids!

Red Delta

I have no problem wearing seatbelts in my late model vehicles and my big truck. However, I don't like to put the lap belt on in the '66. I figure, if I crash it, I will be impaled by the steering column, and smash my face on the sharp edge of the dash anyways. So the belt ain't going to help much.

The rear seat has two belts, but I have three kids. Two of them are under five, one is in a car seat and the other in a booster. I feel confident that the lap belt is perfectly suitable to hold them in place in the event of a collision.

Unfortunately, the 10 year old, sitting in the middle, may not have a good time. I have a line on a belt that matches the others to put in that middle seat. But I feel that shoulder belts in a classic car is overkill. But that is just me.

jaunty75

But this is only true in a head-on collision. You might be hit from the side or from the rear, in a roll-over, or who knows what, and the belt would keep you in place rather than have you be tossed around inside the car. It's still better to wear belts than not to wear them, regardless of the presence or absence of other safety features.

Red Delta

I agree. Perhaps I should have put it differently.

I'm lazy.

Bluevista

Cool you found those mount points, I didn't think Fisher Body was jiving anybody in the manual.
Without shoulder harnesses back seat pasengers tended to bash their faces on the back of the front seat, front seat passengers dashboards and driver's the steering wheels in accidents.
If for no other reason wear them and make your passengers where them so you don't damage your nice restored or original seats, dash or steering wheel in a crash, stain the carpeting with blood.
People heal...cars don't.
If the car is equipped with shoulder harnesses you have to wear them in Ohio, all passenger cars after January '68 except convertibles were required to have them in the front seat outboard positions and the cops know.
The Ohio highway patrol really knows, don't mess with them, even the cops hate those guys.

jaunty75

What I find interesting is that those mount points were apparently put there even if the car wasn't ordered with shoulder belts. Was it common for GM to put the mount points in every car and just attach shoulder belts to them if they were ordered for that particular car? Could shoulder belts have been ordered back in the day as a dealer-installed option?

Bluevista

The mounts are there if you get them or not, they're factory installed and in 1971 the AS4 code is deluxe rear shoulder belts. The belts are only available with the deluxe seat belt option.
It says it in the brochures and in the manuals that all 1971 models are available with rear shoulder belts.

stevengerard

and I thought the shoulder belts were installed by the dealer even if factory ordered, they came shipped in the trunk - anyone know if that is true or not?

Bluevista

They're a factory installed option.
Listed with the factory installed equipment and do not appear on the dealer installed equipment list.
I suppose if you wanted them after you got the car the dealer could order them through the parts department and install the things but it's not standard procedure.
I don't see why they would leave the rear belts off until they got to a dealer, make no sense.

stevengerard

makes no sense to me either, but that is what I heard, the seatbelts were factory only option but thrown in the trunk for installation at the dealer, but maybe not - I wasn't even driving in the 70s

joe_padavano

You would be wrong. The feds required factory installed seat belts AND front outboard shoulder belts on ALL cars (except convertibles) sold after Jan 1, 1968. There was no option about it. You can go to the DOT website and look up the text of the law.

stevengerard

Oops - should have been clearer, I was talking about the rear seat shoulder belts which this thread is about

goldcutlassS

Rear shoulder belts are an easy install. The factory assembly manual and the Fisher body manual both show where the mounting points are. Locating the correct mounting brackets are the slightly difficult part. Finding matching buckles that match your buckles is sometimes difficult. I luckily found a 69 Cutlass S that was being parted out, and it had the right buckles and brackets. The rear shoulder bracket is actually the same as the front shoulder bracket. The plastic cover is also used to cover that bracket on the rear shelf. Also use the same bracket on the underside of the package tray. Just make sure to use grade 8 bolts and nuts and washers. 150,000 ponds per square inch tensile strength can't be wrong.

jaunty75

Good advice, but do you realize that this thread is over a year old?