Auto to Manual Seat Belt Swap

racecougar

Registered User
I had a little time this weekend between parts requests, so I actually had a chance to do a little work on my 90 XR7. Since the drivetrain is done (just waiting for someone to come to St. Louis so I can get the car dynotuned), I decided to get back to work on the interior. The car now has the 94-97 style manual seat belts, sail panels, A-pillars, and door sills, to go with the 94-97 dash, door panel, and console swap I did some time back.

showcar%20rear%20interior.jpg


The auto to manual seat belt swap turned into more of a pain than I expected, but it's done. I'll have a write up on the swap done in a day or two.

I figure that the 89-93 guys might appreciate this swap.

-Rod

P.S. - I have a little surprise in the interior of this car that I will post about as soon as I finish it. So to those of you that know about it, shhhh.
 
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racecougar said:
I have a little surprise in the interior of this car that I will post about as soon as I finish it. So to those of you that know about it, shhhh.
I don't know what you are talking about :)
 
concerned

Although I don't care for the automatic seat belts, could swapping them out create inspection problems or, worse yet, insurance claims problems if someone were injured while riding in a vehicle with non-standard equipment?

I'm not trying to rain on anyone's parade, but in today's sue-happy world, I'm sure some lawyer would be all over this.
 
Kurt K said:
Although I don't care for the automatic seat belts, could swapping them out create inspection problems or, worse yet, insurance claims problems if someone were injured while riding in a vehicle with non-standard equipment?

I'm not trying to rain on anyone's parade, but in today's sue-happy world, I'm sure some lawyer would be all over this.

Kurt, I doubt that a mechanic would even notice them in a safety inspection. However, in the case of an accident, I could see the remote possibility of a lawsuit. I guess I'll write a little disclaimer in the write up that I'm working on.

-Rod
 
That's awesome Rod - I've thought about doing the same thing, just didn't have a car to take the parts from. I'd be interested to see the write up as well.

Also kinda curious about your interior surprise too :D

-Melon
 
Or you could just move up here and buy a car. None of our MN-12s had those horrible abominations installed. ;) :p

cheers
Ed N.
 
racecougar said:
Kurt, I doubt that a mechanic would even notice them in a safety inspection. However, in the case of an accident, I could see the remote possibility of a lawsuit. I guess I'll write a little disclaimer in the write up that I'm working on.

-Rod
That's all I was suggesting Rod...a little disclaimer. Very cool job
 
For the record, if anyone is interested in ditching the automatic belts but dont want to swap to the 94+ interior, you can get sail panels, quarter trim panels, etc from a Canadian 89-93 car. Canadian cars did not ever have the auto belts, and this is what I did for my swap two years ago.
 
Yep, and I think I mentioned that in the writeup. However, the Canadian parts seem to be pretty hard to come by. I searched for a pair of Canadian cougar sail panels for over a year before I went this route.

Shipping is pretty costly too for the sail panels.

-Rod
 
racecougar said:
Yep, and I think I mentioned that in the writeup. However, the Canadian parts seem to be pretty hard to come by. I searched for a pair of Canadian cougar sail panels for over a year before I went this route.

Shipping is pretty costly too for the sail panels.

-Rod
i guess im lucky that im only 10 miles from the canadian border, for more reasons than one-- it was fun growing up and drinking at 19, too!!
 
Ok, after being bugged about what my "little secret" could be for awhile now, here it is:

showcar%20headliner%201.jpg


showcar%20headliner%202.jpg




I reupholstered the headliner with stripes inlayed into it to match the stripes on the body of the car. I also had to slightly reshape the front of the headliner to fit the overhead console. The overhead console has a polished aluminum switch panel to control a few things on this car.

And here is a picture of how the headliner looked before I laid the fabric on it:

showcar%20headliner%203.jpg


And to the aggrevation of the 56k'ers out there (hey, I'm one too), here is a pic of the current state of the interior:

showcar%20interior%204.jpg


-Rod
 
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