Yet Another Seat Belt Question

[Newell33]

I've posted a couple of times regarding seat belts and appreciate the responses, but I still have a few questions. I've mounted 5 point harnesses in circle track cars and have welded in bars and tabs to roll cages to accomodate the harnesses. My '76 Fiat has me a little stumped as to how to proceed. I've purchased aftermarket type seats with two slots for the shoulder belts. I've also purchased a Corbeau 4 point type harness with a retractor reel. The retractor reel has one bolt hole for mounting, which doesn't excite me all that much. The bolt hole is towards the edge of the reel assembly. In order to properly mount the reel in the back seat area I'd have to fabricate something along the floor to both get the belt angle correct, and to also allow the reel to mount at the correct angle considering the location of the reel mounting hole. I've seen some stock spiders with rear seat backs that have the belt slots in the middle of the top portion of the seat.

1. On these years of spiders can anyone tell me how the shoulder belt reel is mounted to the floorboard/rear firewall area? I think I may have seen bolt hole provisions in the corner of the rear firewall area on a couple of members' cars but I don't believe my '76 has those provisions.

2. I've seen quite a few Spiders with harnesses on various websites. Some are professionally done rally/autocross type cars with roll bars and some aren't. Does anyone have any pictures of cars that don't have the harnesses/reels attached to a roll bar but do have a professional harness installation? I'm reluctant to fabricate harness/reel mounts to a uni-body type chassis. Surely with all the Fiat SCCA vintage cars and autocross cars there are some photos floating around somewhere. The kicker here is that I would like to retain some type of rear seat, at least room for one in the middle...


Like I said, I know I've asked about this before but I'd like a little more info before I proceed.

Thanks!
Josh

[So Cal Mark]

the belts that mounted to the floor had an angle bracket to guide the belt. I'll get some pics of the rear firewall mounts for you, but probably not til Friday

[Newell33]

Thanks Mark. No huge hurry. I have plenty of other things to work on.

Josh

[mdrburchette]

Here's a pic of the retractor on my 72 Spider. I'm not sure if this will help you since my car only has lap belts:


My 5 point harness in my 71 Spider is attached to the rollbar. There are no provisions in the early cars for a shoulder harness. I believe the later cars had a hole going through the rear seatback and the retractor for the shoulder harness was mounted on the firewall. I can't remember if it was inside the trunk or tucked behind the seatback somehow. Either way, it wasn't feasible for me to mount an original style seatbelt in any of my early cars without cutting into the seats. The later models also had a guide mounted on the front seatbacks for the belt to go through and not slip off the shoulder.

[Newell33]

Thanks for the photo. I believe my car is set up the same way as yours and has the bolt hole for the floor mounted reel right behind the seat. I plan on mounting my reel to the rear firewall area, but was curious as to how the cars that came with those type of setups from the factory had them mounted. Like I mentioned before I'm sure someone out there has done a little fabrication without installing a roll bar. If so, I'd like to see some photos of that as well.

Thanks,
Josh

[Newell33]

Hi Mark

Did you have a chance to locate those photos of the rear seat belts?

Thanks,
Josh

[bakercs]

Josh,

I am not sure that this is the solution to your shoulder harness question, but this is how it was done in a 124 gr3 rally car. The picture shows the harnesses attached to a mounting bolt in the lower part of the rear firewall. My '73 has the same mounting points.

[Newell33]

Thanks Carl

I think I'm going to have to end up adding a plate/mount to the bottom of the floor for my Corbeau reel. The setup shown just won't work with the angle that the belt comes out of the reel, and the way the reel has to be bolted to the floor. Has anyone welded to the flooring and/or plated the underside for their mounts? I hate to beat this thread to death, but I'm still not comfortable with the solutions I've seen so far.

Thanks again for the photo!

Josh