Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Morgan Three Wheeler & Super 3 M3W seatbelt removal?

Maybe not in this case but, a common cause of non retraction of seat belts, even in normal cars is simply dirty webbing. Pull them out as far as you can give the webbing a wash with soapy water in a bucket and rinse after,leaving them fully extended to dry.

if it locks, pulling it vertically upwards seems to help maybe due to being able to release the tension a bit

And then spray the webbing with Mr Sheen or other polish containing silicon.

As far as I can remember, both of my seatbelts were working fine last October when I tucked the car away for winter. However, when I jumped in the car recently to take it to for its MOT, I found that the driver's belt would not retract and the passenger one wouldn't extend. i.e. both had failed over winter but in different ways! Having found this thread I suspected that dust might be to blame, yet still I was surprised at the extent that it had built up (as I'm sure I've cleaned the area several times in the past). The dust involved is that horrible very fine stuff which seems to be picked up by the rear wheel and then blown into the cockpit!

This is a June 2012 chassis by the way - I think later (post 2014?) chassis have a different reel mounting arrangement which may or may not be better in this regard.



So, this time I paid a bit more attention and decided to do something about the problem. First I filled the triangular gaps either side of the compartment with some cut to size 12mm x 50mm adhesive backed foam I had lying around. This thick foam is ideal for this as it's not a regular shape you're trying to fill.



Then I applied some self-adhesive foam to the bottom plate. By the way, the nick out of the front edge you can see is to clear Mr Bleazey's bevel box top mount.



I applied some draught excluder around the perimeter of the area which seals against the aluminium bulkhead.



Finally, I used 'closure plate tape' to seal between the aluminium rear bulkhead and the body which hopefully will prevent at least some of the dust from making its way forward into the cockpit.

I'm lucky in that BHI are only around 35 minutes from where I live so I was able to pop in with the old belts. They were able to match them exactly with the same make of reel. I chose to have 40cm shorter webbing to eliminate the dreaded seatbelt droop. I was also encouraged to have a rummage through their stock of bolts and spacers which was useful. For instance I grabbed a couple of 25mm bolts for mounting the reels into place thus eliminating the unnecessary (rusty) exposed thread of the originals. Why did MMC always use bolts which were 10mm too long?

It was a bit of a fiddle to remove the top belt bracket bolts. Some time ago I invested in a set of 'extra flat spanners' and the 17mm one made the job doable. I cut around 6mm off the bolts before reassembly which also helped a lot.

By the way, if you have ever wondered where old Series One Range Rovers go to die, I have the answer. They are all parked around BHI - apparently the company owner's brother just keeps buying them, I wouldn't be surprised if there are 100+ there.

I bet that super fine dust still gets in there 😁. It has to be a big improvement though, it's not a great installation and I expect to have to do it soon as well. Thanks for the detailed information again.

It'll be interesting to see how different yours is, it being a later chassis.

I recall our first (early 2012) chassis had some form of shield added in late 2012 when we had the (very noisy) first bevel box replaced after a couple of thousand miles. This was to address the huge amount of road water/dirt that was getting into the "cabin" via an opening around the bevel box and seat belt reels. Cannot remember any more on it and not so relevant as we added a mudguard and the chassis has been repaced. In other words, the early cars had a particular problem with dirt/water in that area which was seemingly fixed....

Yes, the area behind the white closed-cell foam in my photos is covered by a reasonably well-fitting plastic moulding (held in place with 4 tie-wraps). As you say, I believe this was retrofitted to the early cars. I added the foam to hopefully catch at least some of the fine dust that manages to make its way past this plastic moulding!