96 Roadmaster seat belt replacement

Fuzzy dice or LED bulbs are not a repair
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kevm14
Posts: 15200
Joined: Wed Oct 23, 2013 10:28 pm

96 Roadmaster seat belt replacement

Post by kevm14 »

The previous owner said the driver's belt buckle recently stopped working. Some spring inside gave up and the belt no longer locks. So he was using the middle seat belt which was alright except you couldn't put the center arm rest down.

Today I drove up to Woonsocket Auto Salvage and got a tan belt from a RMW. Cost me $53 and it's rusty. Yeah. He wouldn't let me into the yard to look at any of them either. Not sure I would have picked a rusty one. And I had to wait an hour and a half in the STS while the guy on his lunch break came back and pulled the belt. Good thing the stereo is good...

I did see a late 70s Seville in the lot. With plates.
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I asked the guy at the counter. He said a guy brought it in for service somewhere (maybe at the place next door). Then at some point while there, I guess it spun a bearing and the guy never came back. So there it sits. Sad.

While I was waiting, this pulled up next to me. It was a customer buying tires. Can't believe this is still on the road.
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Anyway back to the belt. The middle belt was the worst so I decided to see if I could take it apart, remove it, and swap mine on. That worked. I put it in the vice and pried at the back cover. Basically all in one shot, you put pressure on it with a good screwdriver, and pry the cover off. Under tremendous pressure, it FLIES across the room and makes enough noise to actually temporarily change the hearing in my ears. Crazy. I used my vice to press/snap it back on which also required some pressure. Actually, I still can't find the rusty cover. Took me a while to find the good cover. Here's the male end of the center belt which gives you a good idea what the cover looked like.
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Here it is installed. Looks alright. With the armrest down and the driver buckled you really can't see anything anyway. The buckle is a little rusty but nowhere near as bad as the center one which I changed. So I'll probably just leave this one on and not hunt for a nice grey one as I thought I might do as I was driving home.
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Just one T-47 bolt holding it onto the body. And a harness plug for the seat belt indicator. Buckles fine. The indicator took a while to wake up. I don't really care as it seems to default to off. Probably a little rust inside making contact.
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