Here is a part 1 of 2 on repair of the seatbelt that some people find quite daunting.
It is fairly straightforward and part 1 can be done by anyone with pretty basic tools.
What I am going to show here, is how to remove and install the seatbelt mechanism and belt assembly, and part 2 will show how to replace the webbing if yours is damaged, or you want a different colour, rather than replace the entire assembly, as most colours are no longer available and they are damn expensive anyway.
How about bright red in a red car, or blue in a car with blue piping on the leather? There are dozens of colours and shades available.
So how to remove the belt?
Firstly, move the seat fully forward and as high as possible.
There are 2 small torx bolts buried in the side cover where circled.
Next, undo the small crosshead screw at the front of the seat panel, behind the pocket (if fitted). Carefully pop off the side of the pocket to get access to the screw
and remove it.
Now gently pull off the seat adjuster knobs and behind the front one, remove the 2 very small crosshead screws.
You should now be able to loosen the side cover, disconnect the switches wiring connectors and lift the panel away.
Next, using a small pin, push in where shown in red, to release the clip shown in yellow, and remove the rear shell.
Now remove the headrest by rolling it forward as shown, and use a twisting back and forth motion, whilst pushing away from you.
You can now remove the front shell by removing the two tiny torx screws. There is one on the outside where shown, but the inner one is only accessible once you have lowered the seat and the headrest post has risen to clear the seat backrest.
Now you can pop off the screw covers either side of the seat,
and remove the screws. (5 times longer than they need to be but fitted just to be a PITA as they are so difficult to get to. Surprised they didn't threadlock them!)
to access the inner one, you may need to remove the handbrake gaiter to get access to it. I used this....
like this....
Using a hex key, disconnect the side anchor position of the belt...
and remove the front shoulder shell previously disconnected.
The seat back pulls back at the bottom and then lift off two hooks near the top of the seat.....
You now need to lift the outer edge of the back up, and thread the belt webbing through it....
and then slide the seat back along the headrest bar to remove it.
Now you need to lower the seat again so that you can access the two 13mm shallow head bolts....circled in red.....
I found they were so shallow, the lead on a normal socket slipped-off, so I used a Snap-On wrench....
Now, in the position circled, you will find a zip-tie retaining the belt control cable. This needs to be cut....
so that the cable can be removed from the drive motor....
and the reel hex head bold accessed and removed.
You can now slide the seatbelt complete up from the seat frame.....
and thats it! All done.
Easy eh?
Stay tuned for part 2 where it gets a bit tricky.
8Tech.
Bookmarks