Seat Belt Options?

[RJ Gilliam]

I have a 86 930 and the factory seat belt is the most uncomfortable one I have had the pleasure of wearing. The shoulder strap is just choking me. I am considering 4 pt harness, but like to keep the stock appearance as much as possible. Can anyone give suggestions and photos of what they have done? Where are the mounting points for the shoulder straps? Someone told me that there is a "bar" that can be purchased that goes across the rear that the harness attaches to???

And the key question is, does the harness prevent you from reaching over to the radio to turn it up?

Thank in advance.

RJ Gilliam
86 930
"Julie"

[Formerly Steve Wilkinson]

Unless you get into and out of your car just once or twice a day, putting on a four-point harness is going to get old really fast. It'll be boy-racer fun for a couple of weeks, but then you're going to get awful tired of the process.

You wouldn't have any problem putting the lapstraps in right at the present lapstrap mounting points, but the shoulder harness needs either a rollbar to attach to or--and this is definitely second-rate--attaching it to a mounting point drilled through the firewall with a _big_ steel plate to strengthen it, though I suspect a major impact would pull pretty much anything through that thin sheetmetal.

Maybe there is some kind of crossbar that you can fit in lieu of a rollbar--I don't know--but if what you're thinking of is what's generally called a "harness bar," those are intended as positioners and guides for shoulder harness, not as a mounting point.

Oh, and if you do put in a rollbar or crossbar, you also have to mount--if you care--a unit that keeps the seat from crashing back into the bar in the event of a hard rear impact. They're in considerable use here in the Northeast, where a PCA driver died at Lime Rock several years ago when he spun in the wet and backed into a barrier at high speed. All the five-point harness in the world did him no good when his seat hit the rollbar going backward.

Stephan