I have a 92SE, and I hate the motorized seatbelts. I've tried calling people to see if they can replace them with the regular seatbelts you see on today's cars. But nobody will do it for liability reasons. Anybody know anyway that I can get this done?

 

If you have airbags, you can legally remove them. But if you don't, then you must keep them by law.

as for swapping them out with non-motorized ones, there's a LOT of fab work that must be done. the door pillars are different between models and the bolts don't just line up.... so it won't be easy to do.

 

i have only a driver airbag, not a passenger airbag. If I can't change them for non-motorized, can I just replace the seatbelts themselves, say from the stock ugly tan color, to black? I wouldn't see why not. Thanks

 

5 point harness will do!

 

is that one of those racing belts that goes over your head and over both shoulders? If so, I don't want that, cause that looks tacky, and is what those people use when riding their Civics and Integras.

 

And it's what I use at the track. makes a HUGE difference in my lap times.

but that's different than dealing with them every day on the street. annoying.

Legally, cars from like 89 until 93 or so are required to have "Passive restraints" of some sort. that means EITHER automatic seatbelts OR a Driver's side airbag. in 92, the Maxima had an optional driver's side airbag. in 93, it was standard. If you have the airbag, then you can legally remove the auto seatbelts and install manual ones. the problem is the mounting points for the manual are different- and aren't on the auto-equipped cars. (I've looked at this a few times with some friends in Canada and the UK with manual belt parts cars).

If you want to swap the belts themselves from tan to black, that's not a problem. pick some up at any junkyard or get them from Nissan. they probably won't be too expensive at the yard since there's not much demand for belts.

 

great, thanks matt, i just hate how they made the seatbelts motorized. I think that's one of the stupidest decions ever made in automobile manufacturing

 

That's stupid. Auto seatbelts seem like they have more parts to fail and wouldnt be as safe as normal ones.

 

they're just as safe if used properly. too many people wind up decapitating themselves because they're too lazy to fasten the lap belt part. I can't complain as I'm one of them.

As much as we may not like the auto seatbelts, they DID save lives and were helpful at the time.

 

really? people have gotten decapitated?

 

maybe not in a Maxima, but it's been known to happen in a hard front impact.

people don't wear their lap belts and run into something at 60mph. the person slides under the shoulder belt and it catches on their chin. POP goes their head. nasty.

that's why you should always wear your lap belt.

 

'Not a good time to lose ones head.' WEAR YOUR LAP BELT!

 

When I flipped my 93 Saturn @$$ over nose about a year and a half ago, I didn't wear my lap belt...just the shoulder harness. Walked out of it too. Felt kinda funny when I took off the shoulder harness before realizing I was upside down tho.

 

you were lucky.

 

They are a bit of a pain and I don't know if they are any better or worse than the manual kind (when used with the lap belt).

Obviously, no one really liked them because no car companies use them anymore.

I thought about getting racing seats and 5-points like Matt has, but I only drive 2 miles each way to work and it would take me longer to mess with the harness than it takes to drive to work.

 

yeah, I always wanted standard belts too. Dont like the auto ones. had an incident when it got in the way. but also with the standard you dont have to worry about doing the lap belt also. I put mine on anyways but I just donr like them. sometime they freeze up too.

 

When I accelerate hard, my seatbelts tighten up.

 

they tried to rip someone I know's earing out when they opened the door

 

You guys are weird.. I love the automatic seatbelts but I guess I'm the only one

I like them simply because they dont twist up, get caught, and get 'worn' out (ie when unbuckled the seat belt wont retract all the way to the top and just hangs loosely with like 10 feet of slack in it)... and you also dont have to un-naturally reach your arm back behind and upwards on your shoulder to drag and pull it down like you do with manual belts

I'm also surprised the number of people who dont wear the lapbelt with automatic seatbelts... morons... it's true that it'll decapitate you in an accident (like Matt said). I figured that out via common sense when I was like 10 yrs old..

 

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I ALWAYS wear my lap belt and everyone that rides in my car gets to wear it too. When driving other cars, I get easily irritated having to reach back and pull...I'd rather just stick my hand to the right and lock up the lap belt than deal with that ish.

 

I'm not sure if this works with regular seatbelts, but I like the automatic seatbelts because when you brake hard they lock up and hold your body against the seat so you don't go leaning foward. I know regular seatbelts lock when you pull on them hard but the automatics lock up without even pulling hard on them. I'm pretty sure they lock up electronically. I've never felt a regular manual seatbelt lock up when I brake decently hard.

 

The auto seat belt in my car saved my face from hitting the air bag. I dont really see any issue with them. i like them when i have a friend in the car and they have their head out the window and dont relize I have auto belts when they open the door and it smacks there head into the front of the door.

 

yeah once my airbag activated and I didn't even lunge forward. I don't know if that was due to the motorized belts though.

 

my auto seat belts freeze when im playing music with a lot of bass loud.

 

The manual belts in my Maxima (Canadian model) lock under braking. At the same time though, you have the freedom to move forward, to reposition yourself on a long trip, reach something, etc. Belts for the last few years have had pre-tensioners, which is an exposive charge (i think) which fires, and pre-tensions the belt in an extreme stopping situation.

Frankly, auto seatbelts simply wouldn't be in US cars if it weren't for the Federal Transport law requiring passive restraints. It also seems rather ironic to me that a passive restraint system, designed to save lives, will actually take lives or hurt people if the lap belt section isn't secured. Being that the lap belt part of the process isn't passive, and it's an integral part making the safety device work properly, one has to wonder of the logic. I'm not sure of the exact reasons, but that's probably why we never got into having them in Canada. Some cars do have them here, but they were very limited, probably in cars where it was cheaper to just give them all the belts rather than have 2 levels of production.

Which is interesting, because it brings up the whole airbag idea, which is a passive restraint, BUT is designed to function in conjunction with the seat belt, AND if the seat belt is not present, injury can result from the airbag, that in many cases far excedes injury that would have resulted from just the crash, primarly in crashes of lighter severity. Why does this happen? Because the nature of an airbag being passive meant that it had to be designed to stop a 200lb man without a seatbelt. Unfortunately that kind of force causes some sever problem with certain individuals not meeting that criteria. I'm sure some people with back and neck trouble, broken noses, smacked up faces, and those decapitated kids alongside the broken neck babies would have something to say about that. Now after killing people, we have depowered airbags. Maybe we should have just stayed with seat belts? Like Bill Cosby said "safety belts are not there because they're concerned about your safety, the ambulance drivers are too lazy to look for the bodies" and maybe on some escoteric level there's some truth to it.

My opinion, disconnect the damn thing and install a manual belt, as long as you're going to have to put on the lap portion of the belt to be safe, you might as well do the whole thing yourself, saving yourself from mechanical mishaps. You won't be able to get it done though, you'll have to do it yourself, and then take the liability risk yourself... being that you're a private citizen it's a pretty low risk, shops just won't do the work because of the risk of being sued. In Canada, you can apply for a special airbag disconnect provision from Transport Canada, if you meet certain criteria, some of which is height, distance you sit from the steering wheel, etc. However, even with the proper Transport Canada forms, many shops will not do the work due to liability. That's with a government sanctioned provision, let alone just having it done yourself, so if you do find someone, you're lucky.

 

So basically, you're saying that seatbelts and air bags should be optional because people are too stupid to use them.
:

 

creedence, man you're lucky that your max has manual seatbelts. What I would do to be able to have manual seatbelts in mine instead of the annoying and ugly automatic ones. Unfortunately, because of liability issues, I'll never be able to get rid of them, because I only have one airbag.

 

In '92, driver's side is the only one required. from '92 to about 96 or 97, driver's side airbag was the only one required.. you could legally remove the auto belts in yours, but the problem is there's no way to mount the manual ones in the car- not without doing a lot of welding and having measurements of a manual-equipped car to go from.