I have a 2001 Dodge Van. This is the kind used by a lot of airport shuttles or van pools. I also have 5 kids and a wife.
With 6 shoulder belts and seven menbers of the family, ne is using only a lap belt. It’s okay for now because he’s a baby in a safety seat.
But I want shoulder belts installed soon. Lap belts IMHO are not safe enough.
Do I go to Dodge? A junkyard? JC Whitney?
Help me out please?
You didn’t say, but I assume that it is the center seat of the rear bench that does not have a shoulder belt.
If this is correct, then you face some serious engineering issues to do the job correctly (doing the job incorrectly could lead to additional injuries over what a lapbelt alone would provide.)
First off, in the installation instructions for race car seat belts they specify an angle of no less than 90 degrees from the chest to where the belt anchors. Basically this means that you can’t pull the belt over the top and go down to the floor directly behind the seat. So that mounting point is out.
Car makers use the seat frame. yes they do, but the seat frame is reinforced for just this purpose. The two seat backs on a Volvo wagon (1/3-2/3 split) weigh about 50Lbs on the small side and about 75Lbs on the large side. They have a large aluminum frame inside the seat to take the load. IMHO if you attached to the seat frame on your van and got into a serious wreck, the rear seat would distort and very possibly cause injuries to all three passengers in that seat due to the deformation.
I guess you could reinforce and drill the roof But to do the job correctly would not in any way be cheap. Also are you qualified to do the engineering?
Of course you could do it red neck style and run the belt out the rear doors and tie it to a 2X4 that you have suspended horizontally between the rear doors.
From where I sit, the only safe bet is when the child get out of the baby seat, dump the van and get something that has 7 lap and shoulder belts. (I think some of the Chevys and Fords have this.)
Thanks for the links and information. Is isn’t an option to get a new vehicle. I do have a few years to save up for an expencive job. When I bought the van 6 months ago I was prepared to have to spend more money on bringing it up to my standards.
I have three rows of bench seats behind the driver and passenger seats. I was hoping to install the belts on the passenger sides of the two middle bench seats where there are none. Fords have them there. I like the Dodge better and it was what I could afford.
It’s great getting all this help though thanks.
Are the seat belts in the 2nd row built into the seat? Because if they are, and there’s enough room to do this, you could go to a scrap yard, find a van like yours, buy the second seat out of it and replace your third row seat with that. You should also call Dodge, before you do anything. Before their German masters showed up, they had a great reputation for helping folks who wanted to do some serious modifications to their cars. I don’t know if it still holds true today, but its worth a shot.