Three Point Belts in the Back of a GTV6

[Zinhead]

The PO of my car took out the rear seat belts. Since one of the reasons for buying the car was to carry around a couple of small children, it needs new belts. I was thinking of installing three point belts which would theoretically be safer than the stock lap belts. However, these cars were never constructed with three pointers, and there is no readily available hard point to mount the shoulder belt. I was wondering:

• A safe method to mount the shoulder belt.
• Whether fixed belts or belts with a tensioner would be safer.

Thanks for your help.

[Scott in MN]

I've read that there is a mounting location for 3 pointers. I can't tell you where, but scour the forum and hopefully a knowlegable person will pipe up.

[MarcoGtv6]

Yes there is a mounting point for the shoulder belt under the roof liner fabric next to the rear hatch. feel around you should be able to find it.

I have been looking at installing three point belts in the back too, my 8 year old rides back there quite often. Does anyone know of retractable belts that would work? There are plenty of generic non retractable brands...

[Grant]

Why do GTV6's have a hidden shoulder mount??

[MarcoGtv6]

my '84 300zx had hidden shoulder mounts too....maybe a case of car companies getting ready for legislative changes. Can't think of any countries that had mandatory shoulder belts in the back in the early 80's!

[GrandPrix]

I suspect that they are there for the installation of cages.

SD

[alfaromeo1green]

I have been wondering about this very thing. My 4 y.o. loves to go for rides (and 2y.o.), but the stock setup is pretty sketchy, not to mention it may be illegal in my state to let them ride like this. I will poke around for generics, and post if I find anything good. Thanks for the info about the hidden mounting point.
Dan

[Inner Circle]

My original user's manual for the GTV2000 shows only two-point belts on the backseat. (However, they might have added a shoulder belt point at the GTV6 facelift.)

[jjeffries]

I accomplished this same job recently by using rear seat belts from a 164. These are of the correct orientation in that they are horizontally mounted.

There is a captive nut just for this purpose on the rear bulkhead, near the piping for the evap system above the gas tank; this nut is of the specific size for seatbelt hardware, but it is at a level sifficiently low vis a via the rear seatback cushion that I had to fabricate a (very sturdy) riser/bracket to get enough height such that the belt would clear the top of the rear seat back cushion. I did this by cutting four equal-lengthed pieces of 1 1/2" angle iron, each two pairs butt welded to form a c shaped channel, then both the resultant parts welded together to form an (opn ended) box. Am I making sense? before I welded these togther, I drilled two holes in the bottom half, one for the factory-style bolt to attach the new box to the factory captive nut, and the second for an extra 8mm bolt of my own so that each of my boxes/riser/brackets (different words for the same things) would be mounted with two bolts instead of just one. I also welded into the top half of the box - before welding two halves together - a captive nut similar to the factory one in the reat bulkhead for mounting the seatbelt reel assembly to the box, plus drilled a small hole for the locating pin on the seatbelt reel assembly.

The molded, carpet covered factory trim part which spans the car to cover the rear bulkhead no longer fit, due to the height of my new seatbelts on their boxes/risers/brackets, so I cut off both ends of the trim part (saved them, could be re-attached if I remove the seatbelts. It all looks fairly nice. the bottom loop of the reel assembly and the connecting strap both mount below the rear seat bottom cushion, where the factory lap straps go, and since the new assemblies are from a 164, they match the fronts quite closely.

The finished job is, I believe, plenty strong. There may be a much easier way to do this, but I saw those horizontal-exit rear 3 point belts in a junk 164 I'd found for a friend, visualized how it could fit and stuck to the project until it was done.