Replacing a Front Seatbelt: How To

Replacing a seatbelt: How To

Ok my seatbelt arrived from Gene over at GM PartsHouse (great overall experience), and finally had some good weather to work; so today it went in. It’s a fairly strait forward procedure I would rank it easy / annoying. But hey here are some pics and instructions.

Ok, as you would logically expect, the first step in replacing the drivers’ seatbelt is to remove the back seat.

Once the back seat is removed you need to then remove the cover off the drivers seat left legs. Be careful with this because it breaks very easily. I can’t really give you advice on how to remove it safely. In my case I just pulled it up, since I broke it the last time I removed it

Now we need to remove the cover for the door sill. Start by removing the oval cover on top. Skinny screwdriver prying at one side, moving small increments towards the other side until it is off. Once that is off, remove the 4 screws that are now visible. Then remove the plastic screw all the way at the back of the panel. This screw is plastic and sucks, you will need to provide pressure on the back side of the little clip for it to come out. Once all the screws are out, unscrew the seatbelt anchor. When you have it out, you should have a bolt, washer, and spacer-looking thing. DON’T LOOSE THESE!!!! Then pull panel towards the inside of the car to unclip the 2 clips still holding it on.

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ok, now we are making progress. We need to remove the entire back panel now. This contains 3 screws, 2 at the back and 1 hidden at the bottom. After the screws are out, pull towards the interior to unhook the many clips holding it on. Once its off check for any clips that came off wrong, and put them back on the panel.

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Now before you go any farther, slide the seatbelt adjuster all the way to the bottom. This will make it easier to line up later. Then we need to remove the panel holding the adjuster. 3 screws and 2 clips. Once off, just feed the rest of the seatbelt through the adjuster.

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Ok unscrew the bolt from the adjuster to release the seatbelt. This bolt is in there really good, so you may need to grunt and or curse while undoing it.

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Then we need to unscrew one side of the metal bar in this picture. Just undo one side, and pull away from the body enough to slip the seatbelt out from behind it.

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Then unscrew the seatbelt retractor itself.

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Tada. Ok now we need to place the new retractor into the hole. Notice the plastic liner, make sure the retractor is inside this and not pushing it out of the way. The first time I stuck it in, it pushed the plastic down and I didn’t notice it at first. Then just bolt it in.

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Slide the new seatbelt behind the medal alignment thingy. Then bolt it to the adjuster. More grunting and cursing. Remove the white plastic stop on the new belt if you havent already. Then put all the panels back on, in the opposite order we removed them. Then finally bolt the other end of the seatbelt into place. Washer/spacer/seatbelt/bolt.

Some things to note:
I am fairly certain all seatbelt bolts should use locktite. I didn’t think of this till I already had the old belt out and didn’t have any handy, so I didn’t use it. But I think you should.

While the panels/seats are out of the car, use this as a time to give them a good cleaning. And vacuum everything out before you stick them back in.

Good info.

nice write-up. Had to do most of this to change out the speakers.
also, if you dont mind me asking, what happened to the old seat belt??