Several years ago, I had acquired a European seatbelt setup from a Corrado in the UK. This is the traditional 3 point manual seat belts common on European and Canadian VWs. What I quickly discovered when examining the parts is the seat belt itself would not extract from the spring loaded retracter. The lock which was designed to lock the seatbelt during an impact was stuck. The belt would not freely come out of the retractor making them useless. I tried pulling them slowly, upright, level, anything I could think of based on suggestions I'd found online. Nothing worked.
I'd done some more researching online to see if anyone had posted how to fix this specific issue. I'd contemplated disassembling the retractor assembly and cleaning it but came across several posts that adamantly advised to NOT take these apart. They said I'd never be able to reassemble the spring loaded mechanism. But no one offered how to fix this specific issue.
Then I stumbled across a Youtube video of an aircooled VW Guy who addressed this very topic. His air-cooled VW had the very same issue, he could not pull out the seat belt from his old seat belt retractor.
His solution was elegant, he took a bucket of warm water, some Dawn Dish Soap, and dropped the retractor assembly into the bucket and left them soak over night. In the morning, he returned and slowly began to pull on the seat belt which gradually released. Click-by-click it slowly released until the entire belt was fully extended from the retractor. It was time consuming but slowly it did extend the entire belt. He air dried the belts fully extended by hanging them out on a clothes line in the sun.
He later returned when they had fully dried and the seat belt freely extended and rolled back up as designed. Brilliant!
So I'm guessing the years of dirt and grime build up inside the spring loaded mechanism and prevent it from operating freely.
I followed his instructions in the video and to my amazement it worked! My seat belts now fully retract and extend smoothly and lock up exactly when needed.
Furthermore, it cleaned the belt fabric which later I realized was a good idea anyways. It removed any evidence of the previous owner and made the belts smell clean and odorless. Now on to finish the Euro Seat belt conversion in Endless Corrado G60 project
Great advice from the University of Youtube.
Comments