<VV> What to do with old Corvair seat belts? Fun!

[Tony Underwood]

At 05:38 AM 5/3/2007, Frank DuVal wrote:
>Back about 1990 I visited a sled type crash facility at the 
>University Of Virginia. It used a sled to mimick the interior 
>portion of a car instead of a whole car. The test just finished at 
>the time was seat belts as removed from junked cars. These included 
>sun damaged, dirty, worn, etc, examples. Even the shredded ones 
>(where the retractor had mangled them) were holding well in the 
>tests. It was not the result the grad students were expecting! Yes, 
>there was a degredation in holding power, but not enough to effect 
>the outcome of injuries in a crash. At the time they were testing 
>the effect a crash had on occupants in wheel chairs (think transport 
>vans) and how to better secure them.



A few years back, a friend and I used an old Corvair seat belt (out 
of a '63 IIRC) to attach to the engine in a Dodge Monaco, bolted 
through each end of the belt assembly to the intake of the engine, 
which a picker hooked onto in order to remove the engine-transmission 
from the Dodge.    The seat belt picked up the driveline, no 
problems.    Not entirely sure what the 360 with 727 Torkflite 
transmission actually weighed, but the old 'Vair seatbelt (with 
buckle) held it.

Probably somewhere in the area of close to 800 lbs.

Old seatbelts out of Corvairs have been used to tow stuff, pick up 
engines of all sorts, secure drivelines temporarily, drag dead cars 
out of the weeds in junkyards, and in general do whatever needed 
doing at the time when a chain wasn't available.

I have never broken a seat belt doing anything like what's described.



tony..