Three Point Seat Belt Install

I got the aftermarket seat belts from the shop up near Brian, and I was not happy with the way they said to install them.   According to the instructions, the highest attachment, the one that you pull the seat belt through when extending it for latching with the lap belt, was supposed to be mounted just below the quarter panel window.  In my opinion, this is too low because it would be at, or below, shoulder level.  Every vehicle, even the Miata, has this point above shoulder level for two reason; one is safety......in a collision it would impart downward force on the neck/shoulder area rather than a dispersed force across the chest.  The other reason is that it would be difficult to reach back and grab the seat belt after entering the car.  I have seen Mustangs in car shows that had an attachment point welded into the roof rail, but we can no longer do that without damaging paint. 

Brian had asked the guys at the Mustang shop in Auburn how they do it, and they said they said they use a hole in the "C" pillar (the rearmost roof support) to gain access to the interior roof area.  The seat belt kit had some nuts and large washers that could have been inserted through one of these holes, but that would put the attachment point too far back.  I came up with the following solution:

I bought a piece of 1.25 x 1/8 flat steel from Ace hardware and some nuts that matched the size of the attachment bolt, and then drilled the following holes: 

Then I spot welded the nuts over the big holes:

Then I cut the flat stock between the two nuts to get the following two pieces:

Next, I drilled matching holes in the "c" pillar:

Using the length of the flat stock, I could feed the welded nut through the hole in the pillar to get it quite a bit further forward.  I then pop riveted the piece into place:

You can just see the end of the flat stock through the hole that I used.  Any further forward than this I was afraid I would run into problems interfering with the headliner. 

The next step was to install the anchor point for the belt retracting mechanism.  The instructions called for attaching this to the floor, and I used some supplied anchors:

Underside of car



Interior

After attaching the seat belts, things looked pretty good from the this viewpoint:



Note how much higher the attachment point is than if I had used the top of the quarter panel. You can also see there is some interference between the belt and the quarter window crank, but those windows were seldom rolled down, and a rear seat passenger could always pull the belt out to crank the window down.  (Lets face it, most people now don't even know what a window crank is.)
What I didn't like was how far away from the car body the retractor sat:

This looks pretty clunky to me.  I've got some ideas for how to make this better, but that is far another day. 

Steering woes.....some fixed, some discovered

I got the new steering box installed.  It came from a business in Illinois called Chockostang......how cool a name is that?  It definitely solved the problem of excess play at the steering wheel; there is essentially none, now.  The new box:

It is at the other end of the steering column that I am now having problems.  The turn signal "cancellator" is broken and as I got into taking that out I discovered another broken part in the turn signal stalk and a dry, worn bearing.  I will be looking into fixing these problems in the days ahead. 

Mike suggested in a comment to my last post that we consider a rack and pinion steering conversion for the car.  This would bring the steering action up to modern standards, but the conversion kit costs $1400.  It has also been suggested that we convert to power steering, especially because Brian intends to use wider, radial-ply tires which will add to steering effort.  I did some research on the Vintage Mustang forum and found that some say power steering is a necessity while others say the steering effort is only an issue in slow manuevers like parallel parking.  Also, it's a $900 kit and adds complexity.  We decided against it, but it could be added later if it turns out to be a real problem. 

In the meantime, I have been working on other under-dash installations, starting with the fire wall insulation pad:

The driver's side fresh air vent, parking brake tube, and steering shaft housing:

The heater and defroster plenum and ducting.  This is the complete heater and plenum ready to install: 

This is a two-person job and I got Carolyn to help by attaching the nuts to the blower motor on the engine side of the firewall.  This is what it looks like installed:

On the engine side, I left the heater hoses in a loop that I will cut later when I know the exact length I need to connect the hoses to the engine:

The windshield wiper motor and control arms were installed:

Ready for the wiper blades:

And lastly, the clutch control bracket and clutch and brake pedals were assembled:



And installed:



This was another two-person job, with Carolyn starting the bolts from the engine side:

Next up will be installation of the three-point seat belts, which were ordered before we went to Florida.  Between the seat belts and the steering box, we have gone over budget for this past month, so things may slow down a bit.