Question about vert/coupe door exchange???

[dahandyman22]

Is it legal to only have those harness/racing seatbelts in the front that go over both shoulders? I'm just asking because if you only had those harnesses coming over the seats you could just swap in coupe doors and pay no attention to the seat belts. Any thoughts??

[Eikon]

That's a good question...

I've been thinking about the whole seat belt thing for a while. I'm a little concerned about modifying seat belts for legal reasons. What if I sold the car and the next owner gets hurt in an accident. Could they sue me for modifying the safety features and making the car more dangerous? It might even be safer when I'm done... but there no proof.

I think the solution would be to write up a sales contract on the car as a "show" car only. Then I could claim the modifications were done for show purposes and no actual driving was intended.

Anyhow... I think you would be ok with harnesses for your own legal purposes. I don't think any police officer would give you a hard time. Harnesses are certainly safer than a simple belt.

[KA-Te]

That's exactly what I was planning on doing. I already have the doors. They're manual, though, and I can't decide whether to keep them manual, switch my power stuff into them, or just buy power doors.

But that's what Im going to do- just swap the doors and get a racing harness for a seat belt.

[gravetolife91]

I swapped out my doors for manual coupe doors, if you do decide to do that remember to plug in the window stuff from the power doors, cause without it your quater windows wont work. As as far seat belts, i plan to put in racing belts too but for now I took my rear seatbelts, then ran them over the seat and bolted them there, so alls i really have is a shoulder belt. I have gotten pulled over and they didnt say about it.

[slownslurious]

I run harnesses and have no stock seatbelts. Interestingly, as far as the federal standards are concerned its actually illegal for a shop to remove the stock seatbelt hardware. i found this out when I was a civic hatchback that JUN had built and delivered to a customer. He wanted to know why they had left the stock seatbelts in (when they had removed the rear seats and everything and put a cage in) and they said they couldn't remove them due to fed. reg. Thats all I know about that. but I run harnesses and no stock seatbelts on both driv. and pass. sides and I've been pulled over 4 or 5 times (always wearing the belts) and none of the officers have said anything. they always have more important things to talk to me about.