mjc

Before I remove my back seat to look into why my rear, driver's side, seat belt does not extend (pull out), are there any 'gotchas' from the members here that I should be aware of?

Thanks,

John W

Hi,

I could be wrong about this but I recall some time ago others mentioning this.
They pulled real (no pun intended) hard on the belt, and then let it go back in a little way. After that it had unjammed itself and all was well.

If you attempt to take the seat belt reel apart, you will get a very nasty surprise when the big spring lets loose !!!

I haven't had this problem myself (yet) so can't give any more specific details, sorry.

mjc

Thanks John. I'll try it again. I did try pulling on the belt but perhaps not hard enough. I'll also search the archives to see what's been mentioned.

Cheers,

Griffin Brown

I have had this problem with my '97 993. It has happened twice. Both times, all that was required was to pull really hard on the belt, then let go. That unjammed the belt. Oddly enough, the first time it happened I was due to take it into the shop the next day and figured that I'd have them fix it. All they did was pull really hard on it and it worked again. I did it my self the next time.

Jim Sullivan

Hi mjc,
My rear belt has done this a couple of times. My fix has been to pull lightly and repeatedly on the belt, and it might take a minute of repeated pulls. It seems to always finally let go, and then work fine for a period of time.

John H

I had the same problem only with a front belt. I merely unbolted the end of the belt, let it retract abit and pulled slowly to extend the belt. I have found the rear belts to be even more sensitive to "quick pulls". I try to remember to pull the belt slowly when buckling in the kids. This seems to work for me. Good luck.

NRK

Relating to mjc's original question, how DO you access the rear seat belts? I have the opposite problem: the rear belt that I used for a child seat for about a year does not fully retract any more -- sort of flops around back there. Can the inertia reel be retightened?

mjc

Thanks for the suggestion to pull on the belt. Although it took several instances, it finally became unstuck ...kinda anoying if you ask me.

At one point, coincidentally to NRK's question, it had a bit of slack and the belt flopped about. I had to pull on it a few times and then it seemed to catch and reel itself back in.

It would appear the majority here had this occur to them at one point or another. My question, why does this happen? Is it an accumulation of dust or grime in the selt belt mechanism causing the ratchet or springs to stick? Is the webbing not reeling into the 'container' properly and as a result, binding the 'container'?

Here's what I suspect and I'll use an analogy -- while opening my window shades - a horizontal blind, (Hunter Douglas Silhouette), there was an instance where the shades became difficult to close or would stick as they were going up. I noted the shades not coiling "evenly", they sort of coiled up with the latter portion of the shades sticking out and rubbing against its "container". I then pulled the shades down and applying tension on the opposite side of the side sticking out and pulling on the cord to open the shades, I was able to open the shades fully without it binding or sticking.

Assuming this is analogy is similar to what I (and you) experienced, can I hypothesize and say it's a possibility this is why they're becoming stuck and we have to pull on them to unstick them?

and then again, its a possibility the seat belt ratchet or coil springs are dirty...