Blazer Bench - Need Seat Belt Solution

[pid]

I have a 1979 Blazer with the folding reach bench seat. I do not have the male ends of the belts that attach to the floor; however, I have the female retractable ends that are mounted to the seat.

My hope is to just go with new seat belts. I'm also missing the front belts so will need to buy those and would like them all to match. After much searching, I've seen other posts where folks have sent belts to SsnakyOyle for restoration but since I don't have all the pieces I'd like to start from scratch.

I never plan to fold the rear seat forward so I'm not concerned about clearances on the side of the seat to do that.

What would the recommendation be for NEW belts? Has anyone put retractors back into the seat with the female end mounted to the floor? Should I just go with non-retractable belts? Let me know what you've done.

[buffydores]

The male ones for the back will show up on eBay. You might go to car-parts.com.

[pid]

Thanks. I'm sure I can dig up some originals and may need to do that.

I'm hoping someone out there has replaced the belts with new ones and can shed some advice on what worked.

[buffydores]

I can shed some light. I'll preface by saying that I'm not a practicing engineer and you should make all judgments regarding seatbelts outside of my recommendations.

I was over at Ssnakeoyl about three weeks ago. Sam Houston is the owner, and he's super nice and helpful. The hard part about these year model GM seatbelts are the plastic pieces. They've degraded over the past 40 years and are fragile.

Your best bet is to piece together a set of seat belts from car-parts.com using the whole year range (1973-1991). Most webbing is in good shape, even if dirty. Try to find the ones that are all metal buckles.

The really important pieces are the tall male pieces bolted next to the rear fenders (frequently they're compromised by being bent under the flip up rear bench), the tall female pieces bolted next to the front center console with the plastic sleeves that reach the buckle (hard to find these in good shape).

If you must have new webbing, gather them up, send them to Ssnakeoyl with a sample of your carpet or vinyl to help match things up. It's expensive, but right. They have a lot of colors, but for instance, my mandarin webbing does not exist on this planet.

[Irish1941]

Rear seat is odd in the fact the buckles retract vs male end.
Good part is those were used from '78 thru '89 and never changed in design.
Finding a set shouldn't be too hard. Like Buffy said, car-part is best bet.
The LH male ends are usually trashed from the seat being folded over on them. Cant see it as seat folds.

[pid]

Thanks Buffy and Irish for these suggestions. I'm sure I can track down an original set somehwere if I need to but am going to experiment with fitting some new belts first.

I'm going to pull the rear seat apart for upholstery soon. Since I have no plans to using the folding feature of the seat, I'm thinking about installing a new set of lap belts.

I would have to install the female ends on the outside where the male ends would have been. The female ends will be floppy but I'm hoping I can live with that. Once I can get a better look at the seats, I'll see if I can fit the retractors for the male ends where the female retractors used to be. If I can't, I may just have to go with non-retracting lap belts.