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Sat Jul 27, 2024 2:23 pm

My '60 Bettle never came with a shoulder strap seat belt. So, there's no nut welded onto the B pillar to attach one. Have any of you added a mount for one? How did you do it? What are the odds a rivenut would hold?

Sat Jul 27, 2024 3:42 pm

Wanderlost_Overland wrote: What are the odds a rivenut would hold?

Low.

Back in the day, cars without that top mount were often just fitted with a sealed through bolt through the B pillar.

Obviously the head of the bolt would show up but it would hold up well through the multi folded metal. It was quite common on older cars so one could say that it was "period correct" to almost do it that way.

Sun Jul 28, 2024 11:53 am

Upper right is the "Technical" button. Left click on that and you will enter a huge amount of must know VW info.

In amongst those links in the Technical section is the "Technical Bulletins" that has an amazing amount documents of the various VW dealer upgrades. For now go into the "Misc series Z" section at the bottom of that and you will find in that the seat belt installations. One of those shows how to reach up a nut plate up thru the "B" pillar once the rear side interior panel is removed. The only bad info in that is the placement should be higher than the document suggests to avoid back problems after an accident. Best to put it up higher just like post-1967 beetle sedans have that mounting point.

Mon Jul 29, 2024 5:02 pm

In the early 1990's I bought a rough, but restorable Dec. '52 "Zwitter" split-window Beetle. The garage which did my mandatory annual New York State safety inspections on my VWs took in an abandoned '74 Beetle and offered it to me. Its chassis and engine was donor to the '52. There was lots of rust on the '74's body, and I ended cutting it up with a sawzall into small pieces. One of the pieces I cut was the B-pillar, to save the factory shoulder belt upper mount. After I cut the section along the height of the side window opening, I looked down into the pillar section and saw that the safety belt welded nut was attached to a long, thick piece of metal. I used a chisel to trim off the sheetmetal so that I ended up with that reinforcement. It was about 6" long, the metal was ~ 1/8" thick such as a VW engine oil pump cover. It was bent to conform to the curvature of the B-pillar. Width was about 1 1/8".

Since my '52 had the "box" for the semaphores, I positioned the belt reinforcement just below the bottom of the sema box. Drilled an approx. 7/8" hole into the '52's body below the sema box. This was large enough to fit the welded nut on the plate. Then had a buddy weld the reinforcement plate to the outside (facing the interior) of the B-pillar during his body rust-repair session. I covered the plate with padding so that the original B-pillar vinyl trim would cover it flush. But have the plates welded to the B-pillar metal.

So- if you can find a '68+ Beetle or Super Beetle in a junkyard, take a battery powered sawzall with you, pop out the side windows, and cut the B-pillars to get the belt plates. Then you can position them either at the same height as on the later Beetle- approx. halfway up the height of the side window, or down a bit.