My plastic seat belt holder on the seat of my Z3 snapped. Does anybody know how to replace this without ruining the seat? Do you just try to pull it out?! Thx!
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| Reply » Plastic seat belt holder |
Unfortunately, replacing it means removing the upper leather seat cover. It's held on by; There is a post at either end of the vinyl seat belt guide, which pokes through two holes in the leather seat cover. Behind the seat cover, there is then a plate the full size of the belt guide that acts as a giant washer / reinforcement. Two speed nuts are used to hold it all together.
I hate speed nuts. Crazy work trying to get them off. So in this application, it would be really super hard to only partially remove the seat cover. I've read of guys trying this though. Didn't hear what the outcome was. They removed the back vinyl "clam shell" trim on the seat, and then unzipped the zipper in the back. The problem here is, I don't see that this would produce enough slack and looseness in the seat cover to get your hand up in there. Seems like one would have to release the metal tangs that are holding the seat cover down at the bottom, and then cut the hog rings holdiing the listing in at the middle of the seat. Not easy work.
But, in theory, if you could get the seat cover loose enough.. you could take a dremmel tool with a cutting wheel attachment and carefully (so as not to hurt the leather) disect the old belt guide section by section. Eventually getting to the point where you're cutting the vinyl pins off. This would release the dreaded speed nuts into your hand behind the leather, and fish them out of there.
The new belt guide should come with a new backing plate and speed nuts. Putting speed nuts on.. is waaay easier (they like to go on).
I read that someone tried JB Weld but it didn't work. Still, there might be some kind of super duper molecular inter-terciary space manifolding atomic vinyl epoxy that could bond the two broken pieces.  Seriously tho.. might want to do some research on it. There are bunches of different kinds of epoxies out there. Just cuz JB Weld didn't work...
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| Reply » Plastic seat belt holder |
i bought new guides as a safety thing since they are re doing my seats, no speednuts come with them sadly, backing plate does though
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Quote: | i bought new guides as a safety thing since they are re doing my seats, no speednuts come with them sadly, backing plate does though | That was very smart. My Roadster only has 13k on her.. but still .. I should have done that too. Doh!
New speed nuts can be had at the dealership for just a couple bucks. (They're the larger ones).
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| Reply » Plastic seat belt holder |
First of all, thanks a lot for the great explanation! It seems to be a huge job though. Opening up the seat cover from the back indeed does not give you enough working space.
Trying to find something to join the two broken pices, might be an easier solution? It broke right above the bottom connection point.
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| Reply » Plastic seat belt holder |
Quote: | Trying to find something to join the two broken pices, might be an easier solution? It broke right above the bottom connection point. | If you can find something, let me know. There are a lot of people with the same problem......it's discussed a lot on the Roadfly forums, and nobody seems to of found a "glue" solution. I've tried superglue, epoxies, and silicone with disappointing results. 
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Plastic seat belt holder