When I built my car I bought a set of front 3-point seatbelts from Julianos and made them fit the car. I mounted the retractor inside the quarter panel and the loop near the middle of the b-pillar, anchored by a bolt. This is what they looked like installed.



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I have been trying to get another pair ordered in charcoal, but I've run into a dilemma of sorts. There are five different kinds of latches but I'm only interested in the side button release type and the end button release.

One problem I've run into is that I can only find ONE supplier that has color-matched plastic to match the charcoal webbing. The other two I've found either offer no charcoal webbing, or the plastic is black, which would work but not preferred. Also, Juliano's seatbelts now have an ugly long bracket at the anchor end instead of the small ltriangular shaped one like on my seatbelts.

I installed one of the seatbelts in the pics above on the passenger side and it won't wind up all the way. It needs to be around a foot shorter when fully retracted to make the belt tight against the side panel, because the spool is full with around 60" of belt un-wound. Mine needs to be around 48" of webbing fully retracted. Most 3-point belts come 133" long but I haven't determined how long mine needs to be when extended. I need to do that.

The other problem is that the latch on this type of belt doesn't slide freely on the webbing. So when you're in the seat and latch the belt, you have to pull the webbing through the latch. Then when you remove the seatbelt, the latch prevents the webbing from winding up on the retractor spool, and you end up with loose webbing hanging on the floor. New cars have free sliding latches with a button or sewn stop to locate the latch.

The solution is shorter length of webbing (not offered by the supplier) and a freely sliding latch. Both my trucks and all of our cars have free-sliding latches and end release buckles. You can't mix and match latches and buckles with the different types.

Next problem is the end release buckles are only available with cables on them, no sheath. That might look kinda stupid with a buckle hanging out there on the end of the cable. I found another supplier that has end release buckle sheaths, but only in black. I could possibly paint/dye it dark gray if it didn't match closely enough. Maybe all black plastic would make more sense but I didn't want to add yet another color to the interior.

Have any of you installed 3-point belts in your cars? If so, how did you address the sliding latch problem?