Yesterday Ken (Kens50) came to my house and we drove to Bill Brubaker's (Bilbo) to install 3 point seatbelts in my '52 GMC. Two reasons to get Bill involved: 1. Bill had already put belts in his '50 which included making some really sweet brackets. 2. Bill's garage is air conditioned. Ken had offered to buy lunch, so we decided to let him come along too. I had spent time on the phone with seatbelt vendors GEM and Juliano's, both of which were very abrupt. My previous truck (RIP - details here for you newcomers to the forum) had a set of 3 point GEM belts which did the job as advertised when I came to rest shiny side down almost 3 years ago, so I was tempted to go with them again. But I did some more shopping and ran across seatbeltplanet.com in Oklahoma City. They had great phone manners, seemed willing to do custom parts (turns out I didn't need any), had a great selection of colors and were cheaper than the other two vendors. All that and they shipped in 2 days instead of the advertised week. Bill asked if we should do the work in the A/C equipped shop or out in the driveway where the light was so much better. We elected to work outside. Temperatures were in the low 90s with bright sun for most of the day. You can't imagine how much three 60 something guys sweat under these conditions. We used Bill's design for brackets which was much more robust than the big washers that SeatBeltPlanet provided. No welding (another reason I keep Bill as a friend - he has welding equipment and knows how to use it) required, just drilling, cutting and painting of some 1/8" flat stock and 3/16" angle iron. At the end of the day, Ken and I buckled in and headed home. Me with a grin on my face. Seriously, a big THANK YOU to both Bill and Ken.
Had a great time as well, Bill H. and Ken! Good company, easy to work with, and lunch provided It's especially gratifying to be involved in helping someone make their truck a little safer. I'm sure we'll come up with some more 'projects' that need doin' before long. (Hint; rear axle seal and brake shoe replacement.) By The Way, readers, After going to Bill Hanlon's for a preliminary meeting about seat belts, we had a discussion about alternators. Mine has a jumper from the batt. terminal to the sensing terminal on the internal regulator. My voltage seems to always be running just under 13 volts, and sags a little more when the A/C cycles. Bill Hanlon suggested picking up that sensing voltage from elsewhere in the system to get a more realistic 'system voltage' reading. We installed said wire, back into the cab on the fuse panel. He was right! My alternator charges better now, without the voltage drops seen when the A/C cycles, or when the lights are turned on. Thank You Bill for the electronics lesson.
90* heat and sunny; I can't feel too sorry for people that can at least cool off with some Blue Bell, lucky dogs. Still two more weeks till it's on shelves here. We use quite a few seats with the built in seat belts now but I've seen Bill and he definitely wouldn't qualify with any seat that moves one even one millimeter closer to the steering wheel. Not fat--just big.
You could do us all a huge favor and put a write-up together on how you did your seatbelts. Would really appreciate it. Looked at the fotos of your old truck - really sad to see a nice truck like that wrecked, but the thing that struck me was you said you'd walked away from it pretty much unscathed - I'd sure like to understand your seatbelt installation design in more detail
Blue Bell is in the fridge, although I did wait for the 2nd day of availability. It doesn't help with the "fat" issue.
FREE LUNCH Works Wonders At getting _this_ old man up and out the door . I'm very curious to see the upper seat belt mounts installed sans welding . I need to go look at that seat belt Vendor you mentioned , a couple of my rigs have sun faced ones I should replace .
Here you go. As I said before, Bill Brubaker (Bilbo) did all the engineering here. "We" below is Ken, Bill and me. We started by mounting the short belts. 7/16" holes drilled through the bottom of the cab 7" either side of center and just far enough forward that the supplied brackets would line up. View is looking in from driver's door. Then we cut a piece of 3" x 18" x 1/8" thick steel to use as a "washer" to spread the load from the short belts to the cab floor. We thought the 3" x 1/16" thick washers supplied with the kit were a bit wimpy. Make sure you insert the bolts for the short belts through the kit-supplied L brackets BEFORE attaching the brackets from the first picture down through the cab floor and our 3" x 18" plate using kit's 7/16" grade 8 hardware. Bill made a set of custom brackets using 2" x 2" x 3/16" angle iron. Here is my crude drawing of the brackets. Bill ground all edges and corners smooth, we shot some black satin Rustoleum on then and went to lunch. We used a floor jack to take a little of the weight of the rear of the cab off of the rear cab mounts and then removed the two bolts (Bolt A in pictures) that held the mount to the cab. We held the bracket in place and scribed it for the A holes (no comments please) from underneath. Drilled the A holes in the bracket and temporarily mounted the bracket using the A bolts & the threaded B plate. We drilled a pilot hole for the C bolt through the bracket, the cab floor and a stiffener piece on the under side of the cab. Removed the bracket again and redrilled the pilot holes to 1/2". Next we mounted the bracket back in place using A, B and C hardware. We drilled pilot holes for the D and E bolts, removed the bracket again to enlarge the holes to 7/16" and reinstalled the bracket, both "long" ends of the belt and all associated hardware for the last time. Note: We put 2 7/16" washers (you can't see them in these pictures) between the belt winder and the custom bracket for two reasons: 1. Allowed winder base clearance to the head of bolt D. 2. Spaced winder base so it wouldn't be sitting cockeyed against the lip of the cab floor cross brace. The last step is to mount the swivel to the cab wall. We temporarily installed the seat and I sat in it for measuring purposes. If you don't know what a drill stop is STOP NOW and find out. You will need them before drilling the next hole. If you don't have a set, use the farmer method: Put the selected drill bit into the chuck and find a socket (or multiple sockets) that when placed over the drill bit only allow about 1/2" of the bit to stick out of the socket(s). If you do not use a drill stop don't come crying to me when you put a reverse dimple in the outer surface of your cab. Once we decided where the swivel should go we pulled the seat again and drilled a 1/8" pilot hole, followed by a 7/16" final hole. We tied a long piece of string to the nut plate and tied the other end of the string to a fixed object. That way we could retrieve the nut plate when some dummy drops it into the cab wall. Remove the rear half of the headliner and slip the nut plate down between the inner and outer cab. I've got pretty big hands, but there was still enough room for me to get in there. Run the swivel bolt through the inner cab wall and into the nut plate. Tuck the string behind the headliner while you put it back in. Put the seat back in and thread the center belts up through the seat. That's about all I can remember. The nut plate you can't see is about 2" x 4" and has a 7/16" threaded hole in the middle.
Thank you!!! That is awesome! I need to do this, and I like what you did, so I guess I will copy that. Thanks for the time and detailed descriptions!
Ditto - thanks much for the write-up - will file away so I have it in a month or two when I'll need it
