Manual Seatbelt install on S13 quasi-howto

Manual Seatbelt install on S13 quasi-howto

[Updated 10:28pm 05/26/02 - just noticed that one of the images was out of placed. fixed. (for step 2)]
[Updated 2:15pm 01/10/02 - finished the FA look ;) - also my friend and I realized we're both 'tards. we took the pillar trim apart in the wrong order, so I fixed my instructions for the right order.]
[Updated 9:30am 01/10/02 - fixed order of putting trim back on]

OK, this isn't going to be the greatest set of instructions but its mostly straightforward to do anyways, once you start. I might add more later, no guarantees.

I used Canadian (after MC) seatbelts and upper B pillar and A pillar trim, but stock carpet. So I end up with no automatic belt track gap in the A pillar but a gap at the headliner and having to gash the carpet to make room for the further-back position of the lower belt point. Others have either not used the B pillar trim, have cut a hole in the stock trim to pass the belt through, or cut a hole at the bottom of the trim as well as a hole to pass the shoulder bolt through and mounted the shoulder point outside the trim as opposed to inside. Take your pick. The best way of course would be to get the headliner AND trim peices AND carpet from a CDN model, but thats a wee bit o trouble.

I have to recommend you get your hands on a torque wrench, the FSM, a good metric ratchet set, and probably some other basics (crescent wrenches, pliars, woodsaw.. hah)

My friend and I did this in about, oh.. 5 hours? maybe 7?

Keep in mind much of the oddball coloring etc of things is just the lighting / cheap disposable camera.

1. Remove back seat, there's a latch on each side under the seat to pull on, once you've popped those you can just pull it out.

2. Remove the lower B-Pillar trim section which requires removal of a bolt at the bottom near the rear seatbelt roll, and might require removing the pivot bolt for the upper section of the rear seat, then remove the sidesteps in the doors (we'll need them off later and they're covering a bit of the lower section). Apparently the donor vehicle had the trim peices slotted such that you could just slide it past, when we reinstalled the lower section we did that with an old woodsaw. Then pry it off, it has various clips behind it.. just use a flathead screwdriver.

3. Remove upper B-Pillar trim by exposing the bolts at the top (use flathead screwdriver to pop the plastic caps off), then just start prying the edges off, it'll come off..

4. Remove the A-Pillar trim, this one just pops off.

5. We need to pull up the carpet to get to the shoulder belt rolls, which are next to the tranny tunnel on the rear floor. (We'll also need this pulled up so we can get to the lap belt rolls later) There are three carpet fasteners, pry them off, and pull the carpet back.

6. To remove the shoulder rolls, there are several bolts. Removing one (I forgot which one, it should be easy to tell) should let you pulls the roll out, then you just need to remove the other two to remove the bracket. Repeat on opposite side.

7. Now we need to remove the lap roll. This one's a royal pain, especially on the driver's side where the fuel / hatch lever is. On the driver's side I removed the plastic cover for the side of the seat to give a tad more room to wiggle through the hole in the carpet for the lap belt. Two screws plus a third on the recline lever should get the seat cover off. I bent the seatbelt over until I got it under the back edge of the seat, then bent it again to pull it through to carpet hole. Basicly, just brute force it till it goes through. its damn near impossible to break and it wouldn't really matter if you did, since we don't need it anymore. Same on the passenger side, just a tad easier with more room to work with. Getting the actual roll out is a Houdini trick, but we did it, you'll just have to figure it out.

8. Now, time to remove a billion screws/bolts to get the automatic belt track and motor off, pretty straightforward. you have to remove some brass looking mounting plates (the A pillar trim mounts to them, on the USDM 240SX) to get to all the bolts, its pretty obvious. Don't forget the harness connections.. the ones on the A pillar are easiest removed with pliars, to squeeze the tab inward and pull on it, since they're really stiff.

9. OK, now lets remove the seatbelt computer so it doesn't go psycho on you. You'll need to remove the center console. First, remove the trim around the radio/AC, it just pops off (but careful, I recall some people braking some of the clips before). Now, remove the center console. It has 4 screws, 2 on each side; 2 in front and 2 in back, easy to find. Below it, towards the rear, you should a big metallic box. This is the seatbelt computer, just remove the harness connections and unbolt it.

10. OK, now we should have taken out the shoulder and lap belt rolls, plus the shoulder mount / track / motor assembly, as well as removed the seatbelt computer

11. Go ahead and reinstall the center console and dash trim.

12. Now, I noticed on my 240 that there's some odd white blocks that appear to support the form of the carpet in the rear or something, but when putting the lower lap belt anchor in made it so it couldn't really move. I notched these using the woodsaw portion of a swiss army knife, took a minute or two each. This allowed the lower mount point to rotate.

Before: (still in car)	After:

13. Now, to install the manual belts. Start with the belt roll, it goes in the same place the track motor from the automatic belts did, using the big bolt hole on the bottom and smaller one above the hole. Above this there should be some small holes, the little plastic clip on the belts goes into that. Next, bolt up the shoulder point, and pass the lower bolt point through the (Canadian) upper B pillar trim. Next, we need to get that lower bolt point through the carpet hole (which you're going to need to make go further back, experimentation will show how much), and bolt it into the rearmost of the two bolt holes the lap roll from the automatic belts used.

14. OK, now make sure it works, then reattatch the (Canadian) A pillar trims, (Canadian) upper B, lower B, and the sidesteps.

15. At this point you probably say, what the hell, the new trim doesn't match up with the headliner! Well, at least it didn't for me. This is either a 89-90 / 91-93 difference, or more likely, they made more room in the USDM model for the automatic belts, than on the CDN model without them. My friend recalls noticing on a automatic belt Altima (93SE) that the headliner was higher up than on my other friend's '95 Altima.

Misc. pictures

A pillar trim front comparison:	A pillar trim rear comparison:

B pillar trim front comparison:	B pillar trim rear comparison:

Automatic vs manual belts comparison: (doesn't include the auto rolls!)	The entire manual belt 'system':

Interior stripped out: (front) (Automatic belts still in place / visible)	(rear)

-BioSehnsucht