Seat belts for TC21

I am wondering if anybody has any advice regarding installing seat belts on a TC21 Mulliner saloon. The interior of my car is stripped out and if possible, I would like to fit belts. Jon Posted by drdowhitt 06/02/2014 16:20:59

Hi Jon, my tc 21/100 has seat belts fitted c/o two eyebolts fitted to the floor behind the front seats. The belts clip to these eyebolts so can easily be removed. They are of the older style lap and single shoulder type with manual adjustment. This is fine for a passenger, however for the driver if you tighten the belt to make it effective as a restraint you cannot reach fowrard to operate the handbrake ! Consequently the drivers belt is not fitted. Inertia reel belts would be ideal but I understand that the door pillar is not a substantial enough structure for the safe fitting of these. Also there may not be enough space to fit the reel at the bottom of the pillar and still be able to adjust the seat. Red Triangle or someone with engineering knowledge may wish to comment on the strength of the door pillar for a top fixing. I am going to a workshop at Red Triangle this saturday which covers this model and I will ask about this and let you know the answer on Sunday. Of course someone may well already have the answer which I would welcome as I would definately like to fit a safe system to my car - I await some other opinions ! Good luck - John Nicholls Posted by greylady 06/02/2014 21:13:38

Thanks for the reply, John, that is extremely helpful, and good news for me. I can imagine that the alloy door pillar might be a bit suspect in terms of the forces that a seatbelt can exert, and your solution sounds good. I am also visiting Red Triangle on Saturday so hope to meet you there,  Kind regards Jon Posted by drdowhitt 06/02/2014 22:01:42

Jon,  My TA21 has lap sash belts in the front and 3 lap belts in the rear. The front are not inertia reel types. As was common in the 60's a hole was drilled through the hinge pillar without any difficulty and there was no issue with the registration authority here in Victoria. Given our very unforgiving steering column  and the close proximity of the windscreen it is indeed preferable to have the full lap/sash set-up especially for the driver. My view is that we should have the most protection possible. Even if the post were ultimately to fail in an accident, if it helped mitigate a serious injury then it has done its job.  As for movement I had no difficulty reaching the controls and with a little twisting the handbrake can be applied. Posted by RichardWallach 08/02/2014 07:57:32

[quote="greylady":1xp2qnv2]Hi Jon, my tc 21/100 has seat belts fitted c/o two eyebolts fitted to the floor behind the front seats. The belts clip to these eyebolts so can easily be removed. They are of the older style lap and single shoulder type with manual adjustment. This is fine for a passenger, however for the driver if you tighten the belt to make it effective as a restraint you cannot reach fowrard to operate the handbrake ! Consequently the drivers belt is not fitted. Inertia reel belts would be ideal but I understand that the door pillar is not a substantial enough structure for the safe fitting of these. Also there may not be enough space to fit the reel at the bottom of the pillar and still be able to adjust the seat. Red Triangle or someone with engineering knowledge may wish to comment on the strength of the door pillar for a top fixing. I am going to a workshop at Red Triangle this saturday which covers this model and I will ask about this and let you know the answer on Sunday. Of course someone may well already have the answer which I would welcome as I would definately like to fit a safe system to my car - I await some other opinions ! Good luck - John Nicholls[/quote:1xp2qnv2]  My TA 21 Mulliner saloon has had inertia reel front seat belts since about 1980. The upper bolt is fitted to the B post and there is plenty of room on the floor for the inertia reels. My car is at Red Triangle now, if you want to have a look. Posted by Cavendish51 19/12/2014 18:54:50

I have just completed the restoration of my TF 21 saloon which had 3 point seatbelts fitted from new, the unusual thing is that they are fitted 'back to front' in that the buckle part is at the door side of the car and the lap and sash part which has the two point mountings is on the transmission tunnel side of the car. On the TF I have replaced the original static belts with modern inertia reel units and the webbing runs through  a chrome 'guide' fixed to the back of the seat near the top as original. I also have a TC21/100 and am going to fit seatbelts to this using the same method.   Andrew Posted by tf1695 19/12/2014 19:39:03

Thanks Simon and Andrew. It seems there are some options here. I will contact Red Triangle and see if I can fix a time for me to have a look at your car, Simon. Many thanks, Jon Posted by drdowhitt 19/12/2014 23:54:52