I recently got my Fairlane road legal again and since I have been driving it more I have a question for the knowledge of GRM. I have a seat belt hanging from the roof on either side that I can't find a use for. The car has simple lap belts and no extra place to clip in the belt hanging up top.
The car
The confusion
They should click into the lap belt, it was optional keeping your face out of the steering wheel rim in the 60's
There were a few different ways of attaching these things. Ford, GM and Chrysler each had their own method of connecting the lap buckle to the shoulder belt.
My father had them in his '73 Plymouth Fury III. I think that this was the first new car that he bought that he was really proud of. It was a big, impressive car that he bought moments before the first gas crisis.
The funny thing is, he always made us wear seatbelts, but we only used the shoulder belts when we were going on a long highway trip, like Connecticut to New Hampshire. Connecticut to Bergen County, New Jersey usually just merited a lap belt, and maybe a shoulder belt over the Tappan Zee Bridge.
friend of mine had a 71 Impala, the shoulder belt was a seperate buckle
I had a '69 Torino in college. There should be separate buckles in the seat to attach to the shoulder belts. They could be tucked down in the seat, or someone could have removed them at some point in the past.
I want to say the shoulder belts in my 70 Chevelle snap in the same buckle as the lap belt. If my memory serves me right, they go in back to back. I haven't used them in 10 years, so I could be wrong.
No comment on the seatbelt, but the car's looking nice! It's clean, really clean compared to most Fairlanes around here.
In the early 70's the shoulder harness was typically a separate entity to the lap belt, with its own buckle. In the mid 70's the 3-point system used by several European manufacturers with a single buckle became the norm in the US.
IIRC the shoulder harness on my '69 Valiant hooked into the seat belt latch .... but the older I get the less I trust that memory ...
There should be a button on the lap belt that the shoulder strap hooks onto.
My buddies gm product, I think they both went into the slot together.
Joey
