Has anyone here ever replaced the black plastic guide that is attached to the retractor mechanism and holds the seat belt headliner trim piece in place once the headliner has been re-installed? I searched the forums and found two similar questions but the OP's never received a response.

I can post pictures of the piece I am asking about if needed for clarification. Any help would be appreciated as I am ready to put my headliner back up but need to figure this out first.

 

i would like to know as well

 

Only way i see to do it is to cut the piece with a Dremel Tool then glue, sand and paint. It might be possible to take the re-tractor assembly apart and remove it that way, but i would worry about messing up the mechanism rendering it useless.

 

This what you're looking for??

http://www.hawksthirdgenparts.com/ca...lectprice.aspx


( edit )
Or get ahold of RACAR7395, dave mc, ted gerlach, u-pull-it for used ones & do as suggested & carefully make your own slots.

The new ones are kinda $$

 

So... after researching this fix it appears the only correct way to have these pieces replaced is to have the seat belt removed from the retractor assembly and then re-sewn onto it. I have no idea how much this would cost and I don't even feel like calling around to find out.

I do have an idea about how I'm going to make mine work and as soon as I get some time to work on it I will take some pics and see what you guys think about the repair.

 

No - no cutting involved - they have a split in them!

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/82-92...Q5fAccessories

If you enlarge that ebay pic, you can see the split at the top of the pic.

I never had to cut mine when I replaced with new.

You can see it real good here: http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/82-92...Q5fAccessories

 

These are the actual pieces that need to be replaced in order to snap the seat belt trim piece back in place once the headliner has been re-installed. They attach to the seat belt retractor mechanism that is bolted to the roof of the car. After speaking with several people about replacing these, the only way is to cut the seat belt off and have it re-sewn, which sounds like a huge PITA.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/82-92...item518bf79050

 

Oh - gotcha. Never thought about that piece before, I don't remember even seeing it, but it's been a few years since I redid my headliner. Before I'd cut and resew the belt, I'd cut that sucker and slip it over the belt.

 

how do you know if your seat belt retractor is good or bad ? where can you get a new one ?

 

MI ROC-Z

We don't have that on our t-top belt retractors!! The car didnt come with a head liner. Are these needed on a t-top head liner??

 

I had to replace them on my son's car. Thin cut on the end and slipped the bent thru then slid them on the retractors. No problems.

 

Yeah, those black pieces hold the seat belt trim piece in place up against the headliner. I guess if you weren't going to use the seat belt trim piece you wouldn't need them but from what I have seen, the seat belt trim appears to also keep the headliner tucked up against the roof.

 

This is exactly the reply I was looking for regarding my original post. Can you provide more detail or pics regarding the repair you made? Did you use a dremel to cut a slit on the end?

 

Its a t top car. It had a new headliner installed just before we bought it but they butchered the trim. The black retainers were broken and the trim pieces that are on the outside of the headliner around the belts were gone. I don not have pics and the car is in storage for the winter. I used a thin kerf hacksaw blade to cut a slot in the narrow end of the black trim piece. I slid the belt into that first. The black part slides into the retractor. It was a little hard to get in but you just need to be patient. To put the outside trim part on, I used the same blade and cut a slot in the center of the rear part, to the rear of the car behind the belt. Slide the belt thru and snap it into place. It looks much better now. Let me know if I can help anymore and good luck.

 

Well... here's what I came up with for a fix to the problem on a budget, while still making it look legit. Essentially all I did was use a small flat head, flat black, sheet metal screw (because of the coarse thread for holding power), and tapped it into the black plastic retainer which already has a hole in it. Next up was to drill a hole in the seat belt trim piece that lined up with the plastic retainer hole. I used a countersink drill bit by hand to give the modification a non-hack job/neat appearance.

All in all I'm happy with it and it holds a hell of a lot better than what GM came up with, and judging by what kind of crap their putting out these day's, that's not saying much, LOL.

You can see the pics of the headliner re-installed plus the modification that I made in my other post titled Headliner fix!

As always thank you everyone for the comments, ideas, and input.

 

Any pictures of the modified piece?

 

I could not find the original picture I took, so I'm including the link to the other thread I started regarding the replacement of my headliner.

https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/atta...x-dscn1689.jpg

Hope that helps, if you have any other questions please feel free to ask!

 

Ha! I think that's pretty smart and it doesn't look bad at all. My drivers side broke last weekend while fixing a lazy seatbelt.