Better Seat Belts

I’m really not a fan of static-line belts – they need adjustment by each user to work properly, they get caught up when trying to put them on, and get damaged by being caught in doors or having things dragged across them when not in use.  They’re also ugly, untidy and very restrictive and uncomfortable when in use.

So, the Lightweight is getting inertia reel belts.  This is not as easy as it initially seems.  As far as my local specialist can inform me, they weren’t built with inertia reel belts, so you can’t just get a set from LR unless you buy a whole load of bracketry as well, which all costs a fortune.  Exmoor Trim sells belt kits for upgrades, and has a kit marked as suitable for Series 2-door models.  Well, they are suitable for 2-door 109 hard tops, but that’s it – I’m glad I checked them before paying, because they will not fit any type of SWB Series Land Rover, regardless of roof type – they have to be fitted on the shelf behind the front seats and behind the B-pillar which is only present on 109 and Defender 2-door models.  For 109 installation, they’d also need the Defender mounting brackets that go from underneath that shelf down to the chassis outriggers, so they’re not a complete kit for 109s (except the very last of them that had factory fitted inertia reel belts).

Back to square one.  The good news is that I have found several suppliers of Securon seat belts on ebay.  Securon are a British manufacturer, so meet all UK and European certification requirements.  I had planned to fit a seat belt bar to the Lightweight to have a shoulder point above the tub capping level, and to that end got an MoD seat belt and rifle carriage unit that bolts onto the top of the tub cappings and has two strips of Dexion angle run horizontally between the two uprights, with seat belt shoulder anchors at each end.  The idea was that it would not only support the seat belts but also would support the rear seats’ backs in a head-on collision, as I don’t have much confidence in the seats’ structures to handle such forces  alone.  Not the prettiest thing in the world but authentic, which is important to a vehicle like this where we want to keep things as original as is practicable.  Helena has decided it’s too ugly, though, so it won’t be used.  It would also have hampered the ability to climb between the front and back of the vehicle, which is handy for getting the kids in and out without opening up the rear of the rag top.  The shame of it is that I had already spent several hours stripping the rough and flaking paint off the bars to prepare them for repainting, and had reshaped and rewelded one of the belt anchor points, which had been a badly DIY fabricated copy of the other original one – at least they now match each other and are properly made.

The seat belts I ordered are designed to have their reels mounted vertically and to use shoulder anchors (they have the shoulder hoops incorporated), so without the bar, it’s going to be hard to fit them.  However, I still have the Securon belts I removed from the very back end of the 109 when I took the folding seats out to install those grey storage boxes, and those are designed such that the reel can be mounted at any angle and is used as the shoulder point.  Their buckle stalks are too long for use in the Lightweight as they were connected to the tub floor (45cm instead of the 30cm needed for front belts), but as long as the buckles themselves are the same, and the photos on the website show they are, then I can use those older belts on the Lightweight’s current mounting points with the new 30cm buckles.  So, apart from the inertia reel bolted to the sides of the cappings, it’ll be just like it currently is.

I will look at fitting a support bar for the seat backs that runs across behind them at capping height, so will be almost invisible.  It would get in the way a bit for clambering from front to rear, but I can’t make it with arms that attach it to the tub bulkhead in line with the seats’ outboard edges (only in the very middle as there are no centre seat on 24V models), because if it broke off in an impact, the arms secured to the bulkhead could spear the occupants of the front seats – it either has to go full width of the tub or have vertical legs with reinforcing gussets to stand up between the seat backs and tub bulkhead.