Tag: tunnel seat belt mounts
Making And Installing Seatbelt Mounts on Tunnel
by Garage Weasel on Jul.12, 2021, under Chassis
Being a 1960 model, this car did not come with seatbelts and didn't even have seatbelt mounts installed at the factory. I want to install seatbelts in this car, so I am going to add mounts in the factory locations. Since I am working on the chassis now, I need to add mounts on the tunnel. I don't have any information on exactly where these need to be installed, but I found a couple of pictures in the Internet of mid-1960 models with the factory mount locations. With these pictures, I needed to determine these locations by using some reference of a known quantity. I was able to determine that the measurement from the center of the stick shift hole in the tunnel to the center of the emergency brake pivot pin is about 475mm. So on the picture I had, I drew a line from the stick shift center hole to the emergency pivot pin center which according to the image editing software was 517 pixels. I drew another line on the picture from the emergency brake pivot pin center to the center of the bolt on the seatbelt location, which was 232 pixels. So with these measurements I was able to come up with an equation of 517/475 = 232/x. Solving for x gave me 213.15mm. So I rounded up to 214mm. This should get me in the ballpark of the correct location of the two mounts on the tunnel if I use the emergency brake pivot pin center and measure 214mm towards the back of the tunnel.
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To make the mounts, I took two 2" x 3" pieces of 3/16" steel, drilled 1/2" holes in the centers, curved them slightly so that they would fit the contour on the inside of the tunnel, and welded two 7/16-20 nuts on them. I then sandblasted them and gave them a coat of copper enriched weld-through primer just to protect the bare metal. Next, I measured 214mm from the emergency brake pivot pin center towards the back of the tunnel and for the location vertically, I just eyed it and guessed. Not a very scientific method, but I think I will be close enough. At those locations, I drilled 1/2" holes in the tunnel for the seatbelt bolts and four holes for spot welds and welded the mounts to it. The driver side was a challenge as the mount location just happened to be right where one of the accelerator tube mounting brackets was welded to the tunnel. So I drilled out the spot weld on that bracket, welded up in the hole I just drilled in the tunnel, and bent the tube out enough to clear the mount. I then welded the bracket to the mount. I'm almost done with the work inside the tunnel. I just need to weld the new frame head front plate to the end of the tunnel and then I can start fitting the frame head bottom plate to the frame head, tunnel bottom plate, and the Napoleon hat.
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