Seat belt buckles

[Zume]

Hi all,

At toyotafest earlier this year I was going over the pain of having to swap oem and bucket seats at the track because the 3 point belt needed for the road was part of the seat.

Someone made the point it was easy enough to keep the bucket seats in, and just use the seat mounting point as the buckle fixing point, which is a great idea.

Fast forward 2 eBay attempts at getting something longer than oem so they are usable from the chassis mounting point, and neither set will take the clasp on my 94. Image attached if it's something special/odd.

I had a generic set which seems ok with Mazda belts, and a specific Toyota set which fits BMW of all things. Plus others no doubt, but not the MR2.

Has anyone else done this? What do I need to buy? Did Toyota make this pattern in another car with longer stalks? Etc

Thanks all.

[Zume]

If I'm the first one, what does everyone else do with aftermarket seats?

Found this thread:

https://www-mr2oc-com.cdn.ampproject.or ... le-go.html

Which says e21 or aw11, but I'm confident aw11 isn't a fit.

Or make a bracket/extension.

[ClanFever]

Most people when going after market will be using the factory seatbelt and re-using the buckle from the factory seat. If you're going 3/5 point harness, you'll generally have that sorted with the rollcage/bar and seat already. Are you not able to do the former? If not you may need to have something professionally fabricated that is up to legal standards.

[Zume]

Thanks for the reply!

The car has 6 point harnesses, but no harnesses are legal on the road.

Where do they fix the buckle to when you say most people run the original 3 point belt? The OEM has the buckle on the seat, and while there is a point on the chassis which it could fix to, it's far far too short with all the original bits, hence the question.

[ClanFever]

You should be able to bolt them to the seat, similar to the factory seats. Are you talking more about full on race bucket seats than just simple after market Recaros etc? Do you have some pictures of the seats?

[Zume]

They are racepro seats (just your everyday fixed back fiberglass bucket seat), with nzkw brackets which don't have tabs for the seatbelt.

The best option is definitely fix a longer buckle to the chassis, the issue is just finding one that accepts the OEM clasp that sits on the belt.

Did this get used in any other cars?

[4CylinderSpecial]

I remember talking to Logan who said that for his flatmate's mr2 they took the buckle down to pick a part and tried with a few Toyota vans until they found one that would work. Probably your best bet to quickly found something that will be suitable and good to go.

Weird how different looking your gen 3 buckle looks compared to my gen 3. Maybe it got replaced with another unit at some point?? Mine looks like a regular buckle.

[Zume]

Sweet.

If I do find something that works I'll report back.

[Zume]

Interesting that they moved away from this design then, what year is yours? From NZ or Japan? I think mine spent some time outside Japan before coming here.

That gives a bit more weight to the idea aw11 belts might match, if this is something old they passed out about this year.

[GDII]

Weird how different looking your gen 3 buckle looks compared to my gen 3. Maybe it got replaced with another unit at some point?? Mine looks like a regular buckle.

That is definitely a possibility. My car doesn't have the OEM belts, they will have been replaced with a generic unit at some point between importing and me buying it. You can tell by the little lever on the retraction reel behind the plastic panel.

[Zume]

Mine are definitely fully functional sw20 belts, with all the tricky bits that make you shut the door like you mean it. I paid particular attention to them when stepping for the cage because they still to be something a lot of people have problems with.

Just something changed within Toyota and they swapped clasp design between this and 4cylinders car imo.

Still helps point me in towards the right age options though!

[GDII]

There are 5 different belts for the GT/GT-S throughout the years. 9 if you include colours. They stopped changing them in 1996.
G-Limited had a few more but I'd need to spend more time checking which is which. I can't tell what the changes are though.

[Zume]

So asking "What buckle does my car need" is a tricky question then

[4CylinderSpecial]

Interesting that they moved away from this design then, what year is yours? From NZ or Japan? I think mine spent some time outside Japan before coming here.

That gives a bit more weight to the idea aw11 belts might match, if this is something old they passed out about this year.

Mine is a 1996 GT-S if that helps any?

[Zume]

So this is resolved.

The best solution I could find was to match the clasps to the buckles I had already bought.

This was done for $20 each by seatbelt solutions who I took the belts to removed from the car, and they took the belts off the spindles and rethreaded them with modern clasps.