Fitting Bucket Seats

[Justthatek]

Im looking at getting some corbeau club sport seats pretty soon as their a steal at the price it's going for, and need a few questions answering that I'm uncertain of atm.

- Mot time will I still need the original seatbelt buckle for it to pass, even though I'll have the harness's in?

- How would I get around stopping the seatbelt light from coming on, might seem a silly question for some but would I just be able to take the fuse out if there is one for it?

And lastly has anyone fitted these seats to their Megane R26 or anyone In General and what was required to get it fitted.

Thanks

[GC8]

Bloody Hell they are cheap!

edited, as it wasn't relevant - they even come with sidemounts and sliders!

[andyiley]

Answers to your questions.

No.

Not an mot fail.

Haven't done that.

[GC8]

The answer is definitely yes, you will need seatbelts unless you have fitted E marked road orientated harnesses, which are pretty crap.

With regards to warning lamps: there are dispensations for modified cars, but you probably wont qualify. My advice would be to retain the three point belt and to buy a proper harness, fit it properly and use it when required. Youll tire of a harness o a road car in about half an hour.

[Justthatek]

After more research I'll be either going for megane spec subframes or fabricating a set up at work. And either keeping my standard seatbelt buckle or just buy another set of buckles and mount it to the new seats, and the seatbelt light will need to cleared on diagnostic

[PaulKemp]

Full harness seat belts will need the shoulder belts that go behind the seat fitting to a proper anchor point which will make the rear seats unusable
If you fit them properly then they will pass MOT but the effective seatbelt height regulations mean the seat will be a load bearing part of the system.
On kit cars which I have built the rear roll cage has a crossmember at the correct height for the belt to run over or bolt to, if bolted a tube has to be welded and threaded in the crossbar

[227bhp]

Go to a scrap yard with your seatbelt 'holder', find a car like yours (could be any Renault), check the metal plug-in bit fits in your holder, cut it off with sharp knife and pay the man your money.
You'll probably work out the rest....

Sorry for possible incorrect nomenclature, wtf do they call the parts of a seat belt system?!

[Stiggolas]

You could leave the lap and diagonal belts plugged in but run them behind the seats and just use the harnesses (assuming they are road legal ones).

[kambites]

I'd never want a road car with only harnesses. It's surprising how much the inability to move your torso around compromises your vision.

[DRCAGE]

I have recently done this to my Civic EP3, will do my best to help as I was really struggling to find out information.

I didn't need original seat belts for mine, passed MOT the other day.

To get rid of seat belt light, which i think is a requirement for MOT, I used some of these:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/321693567553?_trksid=p20...

They are essentially the same as the airbag light resistor kits you can get.

They are designed to fit into the airbag/seat belt plugs, and fool the car into thinking the airbag/seat belt is still there, but I only had the male side of the connector left, which meant I ended up cutting the plugs off and crimping the resistors onto the end of the wires. That obviously makes this a pretty permanent change. This is the airbag, I had to do the same for the seat belts.



When looking for information I found this:

https://www.schrothracing.com/sdocs/2009_Competiti...

Although it is more aimed at motorsport, and also mainly common sense, it was endlessly helpful, and also one of the reasons I went for a Schroth harness. Schroth seem to have more info available than the rest of the manufacturers put together, but maybe I just didn't see it. There is also loads more available from Schroth. Getting all the various angles etc correct can be a nightmare, and I am still not 100% happy with my setup.

I went for this model:

http://www.demon-tweeks.co.uk/motorsport/harnesses...

FIA and EEC approved for the road, really decent quality.

As others have said, having harnesses full time will be a pain and the amount the restrict your movement is incredible. Maybe a reason to keep original belts as well, but I absolutely love the feeling it gives. It's a 2nd car for me, and if it was full time I'm sure they would send me mental. I did use the original belts for a while, which did work really well, but not having an airbag meant I had to go for full harness soon after.

Here is how I had seat belt buckle set when using standard belts:



I also have a rear cage, mainly for the harnesses, you can go down to the rear seat belt points, and MOT guy did mention that that was a requirement/preferred, but the harness manufacturers don't seem to recommend it apart from with certain seats. I never planned to take this route so don't know to much about it.

I guess a lot of this doesn't really apply to you, and I may have rambled a bit but I hope it helps

And here's a couple of pics of my setup because I like to show off

[twocolours]

DRCAGE said:

Here is how I had seat belt buckle set when using standard belts:

Sorry for the slight thread hi-jack...

DRCAGE - is that the standard buckle with a hole drilled further up the stalk? I'm trying the achieve something similar in my EP3, was trying to find a short stalk buckle that was compatible with the EP3 metal clip but with no success so may try something like this. Presumably this must weaken the metal stalk to some degree?

Cheers