3-point seat belts in tudor

[Gold Digger]

Has anyone installed 3-point seat belts in a tudor and if so how did they mount the top mount? It needs to be a strong mount.

[alexiskai]

I’ve seen instructions for it, you basically have to get inside the B pillar and put a plate there for the belt to attach to.

[BRENT in 10-uh-C]

Originally Posted by Gold Digger

Has anyone installed 3-point seat belts in a tudor and if so how did they mount the top mount? It needs to be a strong mount.

Which top mount do YOU feel is more important, -a strong mount, ...or the correct location of that mount?

(Due to the location of the Quarter Lock Pillar, you are not going to get both of those.)

[51504bat]

You mike check with Juliano's. They have a good rep in the hot rod field. I don't see anything Model A related on their web site but might be worth contacting them.
https://www.julianos.com/default.asp

[eagle]

I saw someone so proud of their seat belts in an A. Made a bracket that mounted to the frame that the seat belts fastened to. I guess I'd not like to be in a wreck and be the piece of meat between the body and the frame, as that's what he had made himself. Most of the contraptions I've seen make me happy with my no-seat-belt A. I'm not against them, but just make sure they are well thought out. (maybe a fighter jet ejection seat? )

[BRENT in 10-uh-C]

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Originally Posted by eagle

I saw someone so proud of their seat belts in an A. Made a bracket that mounted to the frame that the seat belts fastened to. I guess I'd not like to be in a wreck and be the piece of meat between the body and the frame, as that's what he had made himself. Most of the contraptions I've seen make me happy with my no-seat-belt A. I'm not against them, but just make sure they are well thought out. (maybe a fighter jet ejection seat? )

Exactly!! Since my son designs & builds race cars, I probably think about things differently than others do however in this situation lets just think about some things before decisions are made.

To begin with, when a passenger gets into a Model-A that has seat belts added, they take for granted the safety restraints in that vehicle will protect them. Most people would never have any reason to question it. If you look at the location of the Quarter Pillar, it is almost even with -or actually in front of the occupant's shoulder. In a collision situation when this happens, there is little restraint of the shoulder since it is not holding the occupant from forward motion. At that point, its all about hoping no one gets a neck or a back broken. Additionally, the Sills are a pressed shape of 16 gauge that most people do not even install the repair panels on the quarters correctly. Therefore the sills will buckle in an accident when a sudden 15-20 Gs of force are introduced during impact.

So while I am not recommending installing safety restraints, ....something that might help in a 3-point harness situation is to consider plating the inside of the quarter panel over the rear ¼-window with 0.250" thick plate and weld it to the inside of the quarter panel sheemetal. This would allow the mounting point to be rearward of the front seat occupant. Additionally, the lower Sills on the body need to be replaced. Form 2"x3"x.120" wall tubing that would be substituted where the infrastructure will be strong enough to hold the lap belts during an impact, and also be strong enough to remain fastened to the vehicle frame during the impact. For those of us who have inspected crashed Model-As, generally the body does not stay firmly attached to the frame during the impact.

[ldreeg]

We installed shoulder belts in front of my 1930 Tudor and 3 belts in the rear seat. The front belt receivers rotate down for showing and the rear rotate sideways to make them invisible.
The shoulder belt goes thru a sleeve we made between the window glass and inside molding so the retracting mechanism is hidden from view.
Very little visible.

[ldreeg]

I purchased from Seatbelt Planet in Oklahoma 405-225-0114 Steve.
website www.seatbeltplanet.com
I've attached what I purchased with part numbers, quantities and 2021 price.
The mounting angle brackets are available with or without hardware as kits.
The number on the attachment is incorrect.
Check current prices, I'm certain they have gone up!

Good luck!

[ldreeg]

We formed a PVC pipe to cover the belt and protect against water and prevent the belt from rubbing on the interior painted trim and the glass.

[alexiskai]

Originally Posted by eagle

I saw someone so proud of their seat belts in an A. Made a bracket that mounted to the frame that the seat belts fastened to. I guess I'd not like to be in a wreck and be the piece of meat between the body and the frame, as that's what he had made himself. Most of the contraptions I've seen make me happy with my no-seat-belt A. I'm not against them, but just make sure they are well thought out. (maybe a fighter jet ejection seat? )

Every thread about seat belts seems to attract at least one person either explicitly or implicitly arguing that no seat belts is safer than seat belts attached to the frame. I would like to see these people produce actual evidence instead of speculative ideas of physics. If you have seen actual accidents, what were the injuries? Were there belts and how were they designed? Was the body separated from the frame entirely or partially, and where?

This kind of theorizing has real-world consequences.

[Pete]

Originally Posted by Gold Digger

Has anyone installed 3-point seat belts in a tudor and if so how did they mount the top mount? It needs to be a strong mount.

It can not be done unless you are willing to do some extensive frame modifications and add a roll bar.
Model A's were built before crash safety was invented and have NO basic features for such.

[BRENT in 10-uh-C]

Originally Posted by Pete

It can not be done unless you are willing to do some extensive frame modifications and add a roll bar.
Model A's were built before crash safety was invented and have NO basic features for such.

Originally Posted by alexiskai

Every thread about seat belts seems to attract at least one person either explicitly or implicitly arguing that no seat belts is safer than seat belts attached to the frame. I would like to see these people produce actual evidence instead of speculative ideas of physics. If you have seen actual accidents, what were the injuries? Were there belts and how were they designed? Was the body separated from the frame entirely or partially, and where?

This kind of theorizing has real-world consequences.

Colin, I think you are not stating that accurately. Improperly installed safety restraints (-at least in motorsports) have been proven to be more lethal than not. To Pete's point, you do not find safety restraints in vehicles such as motorcycles or karts. My point in posting above is, a Model-A can likely be modified correctly where safety restraints will adequately do their job, however most people who retrofit something have not thought it thru.

Colin, since you are an engineer, let me ask you to calculate a few things for us. Let's suppose the vehicle has four 175# occupants that are each belted into each of the vehicle's seats. Let's use a hypothetical scenario that this vehicle is traveling 30 mph when a vehicle pulls out and that Model-A strikes the other car head-on. What would you calculate the immediate force against each seat belt attaching point will be individually and collectively?

Carrying this question even further, if the restraint belt's attachment points allow the occupants to move forward any during impact, what does that do to yield of the attachment point connectors?

Also, how many installations have you seen where the straight-line direction belt is changed as the belt must follow the contour of the seat spring?? In the images I see in most Model-A installations, the angle of the belts are not correctly positioned, so the occupant is not really restrained in the proper manner, ...and my point in all of this is, -most passengers riding in any vehicle immediately assume when they buckle the restraint around them that it will protect them from harm in the event of an accident. In other words, the installer subliminally misled them in to believing they would be safe. In this forum setting when a topic such as this is discussed, I feel we want to be accurate in our advice we give.

One parting thought to ponder. Do each of us actually believe that a horizontal 4' length of Unistrut would be strong enough to pickup and support the weight of a Model-A vehicle?? Most with any experience with Unistrut would agree that Unistrut is too weak to be used in that manner, -and especially if subjected to a sudden force, ...yet based on calculations, the G forces of one 175# person subjected to just a 20 mph impact exceeds the weight of a Model-A Roadster. Now factor in a 2nd person whose restraint is attached to the same piece of Unistrut!!

[Jim/GA]

So what you end up with is "The Illusion of Safety".

My good friend's 1928 Coupe was hit from the side at high speed. He had installed lap belts. Both he and his wife were ejected out the side of the car upon impact and killed. It was as if there were no seat belts in the car at all. The belt mounting points pulled out upon impact (high G-force Brent refers to).

The Illusion of Safety

[Big hammer]

“ Illusion of Safety “ Jim that covers it all !

[alexiskai]

The entire anti-seatbelt argument centers around the idea that seat belts seem safer than they really are, because people are accustomed to modern safety systems, which require the whole car to be designed for occupant safety. Let's explore this idea, because I think it breaks down into a few different claims.

Claim #1: Passengers should be able to make informed decisions about whether riding in a Model A is safe.

This is a perfectly reasonable idea, and I don't think owners should go around making claims about seat belts that they can't support with evidence.

However, I assume those who opt to go without seatbelts are also lecturing their passengers on the high likelihood that, in the event of an accident, they will be ejected from the vehicle and suffer fatal or near-fatal head injuries. I don't think most passengers assume that the doors will pop open at the slightest impact. So we need to be fair about the safety disclosures – seat belts aren't safe and the doors are even less safe.

Claim #2: Seat belts that aren't securely mounted to the frame will give way in a crash.

Also perfectly reasonable, also probably true.

Claim #3: Seat belts that *are* securely mounted to the frame will injure the occupant in a high-speed crash – because the body will detach and crush the occupant, or because the frame will yield in a way that nullifies the efficacy of the belts – unless extensive modifications are made to the body and frame to strengthen and bond key sections.

This one I'm going to need to see evidence on – specifically I want to see evidence that belted occupants fare *worse* than unbelted occupants. Brent cited motorcycles and karts as vehicles that don't use restraints, and that's true, but they certainly use safety equipment.

Specifically, they use helmets. Very nice, expensive, full-face helmets. They use helmets because the thing we are all talking around here is that, if you're in an accident in a Model A or a motorcycle or race car or other inherently unsafe vehicle, the thing that's most likely to kill you is blunt force trauma to the head.

You can get trauma to your head in a number of ways. You can hit the road with it, and in Model A accidents, many many fatalities are due to head-road impacts. But you can also hit things inside the car with it – the glass, the steering column, the dash, etc. And it's true that, with lap belts in particular, upper-body injuries can still occur in accidents.

But I think there's some rhetorical sleight-of-hand going on here between the idea that lap belts, and lap/shoulder belts where the shoulder is connected to the body, are less safe than their owners think, versus the idea that they are less safe than doing nothing. You can argue, as Brent does, that adding structural modifications makes seat belts more effective. This seems obviously true.

But I think he also is arguing that seat belts that don't include structural modifications offer only a trivial safety benefit. And this is where I think we need to ask for real-world accident analysis.

For example, in 1986, the UNC Highway Safety Research Center published a study looking at crash injuries for rear-seat occupants. At the time, seat belt use wasn't required by law, and most cars had only lap belts in the rear seats. Although rear seat occupants in 1986 would not be at risk of, say, being impaled on the steering column, or hitting an unpadded dashboard, they were still at risk of head injury in side impacts or by hitting the front seats in a frontal crash. And in fact, the NTSB at the time was specifically investigating whether rear lap belts were any better than nothing. A lot of people thought they were totally ineffective.

The study, by BJ Campbell, found that lap belts alone provided some degree of protection against injuries in all accidents except the most severe head-on collisions. Campbell wrote, "Rear seat lap belts reduce serious injury among such belt users - and reduce the injury appreciably - by about half. For fatal injuries, the reduction is less -- 25-30%."

Even though the circumstances of this study are not directly comparable to the Model A seat belt question, I think it is relevant in showing that even "bad" seat belts, used in cars that didn't have modern safety features like air bags or crumple zones, reduced the risk of serious injury or death in accidents by a substantial amount when compared against no belts at all.

And I think that is what we should specifically be aiming for: a reduction in absolute risk. The degree to which each owner wants to go in eliminating the risk of injury should be up to that owner. While I certainly agree that owners should be upfront with passengers about the limitations of seat belts in these cars, the idea that all but the most robust safety protections are effectively worthless is not supported by evidence.

To be clear: I'm specifically addressing claims that seat belts which attach to the frame add trivial protection or are more likely to result in injury across all accident types. If you're going to make this argument, you need to come with evidence. Not analogies from racing, not thought experiments about shear force in a high-speed impact, but actual cases.

[arnhemmer]

I put seatbelts in my tudor to basically keep me in the car incase the doors pop open I stay with the car. I think that you are basically on your own when you are involved in a high impact accident in these cars.

[BRENT in 10-uh-C]

Originally Posted by arnhemmer

I put seatbelts in my tudor to basically keep me in the car incase the doors pop open I stay with the car. I think that you are basically on your own when you are involved in a high impact accident in these cars.

But therein lies the problem. The force that it takes to open the door(s) is typically more force than it takes to cause the restraint system's attachment points to fail. The accident that happened in Texas that Jim mentioned is a perfect example.

Originally Posted by alexiskai

The entire anti-seatbelt argument centers around the idea that seat belts seem safer than they really are, because people are accustomed to modern safety systems, which require the whole car to be designed for occupant safety. Let's explore this idea, because I think it breaks down into a few different claims.

Colin, I understand what you are trying to say however I feel a couple of things need to be pointed out. To begin with, using motorsports as a way to learn is a very good way to educate oneself because motorsports does not always involve fast speeds but it does involve many ideas on one type of vehicle where comparisons can be made as to what is effective. Many ideas on our modern vehicles are the direct results of ideas taken from motorsports.

Next allow me start by addressing your claims by your numbers;

#1) To begin with, it is my opinion that most Passengers CANNOT make informed decisions by themselves. All they know is a seat belt is supposed to keep them safe. Look at posts here about how many hobbyists have installed seat belts in their own Model-A and are proud of their accomplishments yet have no idea whether they will be adequate in a time of need. So in that scenario, if the installer has a false illusion of safety, why wouldn't the occupants feel the same??


#2) Based on Model-As that I have physically seen that were involved in a crash, and studying the pictures of crashed ones, I have noted in the majority of these I have been exposed to the Body became loose from the Frame during the impact. Again, the average is 12 small fasteners (bolts) that are anchoring the Model-A Body to its Frame.

Not to single out anyone but I am going to take the liberty of making reference to the pictures of the Tudor shown above to illustrate how your advice about connected to the Frame is not "real-world" to most hobbyists who have installed seat belts. The issue with attaching the restraint system to the Frame is, the Frame at its widest width is still about 6" narrower than where two of the three attachment points are for either front seat occupant. There is not ANYTHING that is structural in the Sill area, so attaching into the Sill gives no safety support for the restraint device. I have seen this repeatedly in Model-As that have been in crashes. The metal is not strong enough, and it just folds and the anchors rip away from the metal. Next issue with ensuring the restraint mounts are attached to the Frame is, the rearmost portion of the Model-A Frame stops halfway between that passenger's knee and the rearmost portion of their 'rump'. IMO, there is not ANYTHING in a stock configuration that should be considered structurally significant enough in the area behind the Frame to support a passenger's restraint belt. Especially when two occupants are connected to the panel!!


#3) I touched on this in #1 above. It has been my experiences that in the majority of the more serious crashes, the Model-A Body does not stay attached to the Frame. In some crash situations, it was determined that the Model-As occupants that were still restrained were likely injured more because they were all that was holding the Body to the Frame. In other words, the Body shifted on the Frame however the movement of the Body was limited to the belt which was trapping the occupants.

While I can appreciate you mentioning the Governmental Studies (Reports), if I have learned anything in the past few years, it is due to political agendas that most Reports are grossly inaccurate or the message is skewed to meet someone's agenda. Because of this, I would rather use data from first-hand viewing, and reports & pictures of actual Model-As that have been involved in crashes to form my opinion as to what is safe, -and what isn't.

[Bruce of MN]

Originally Posted by arnhemmer

I put seatbelts in my tudor to basically keep me in the car incase the doors pop open I stay with the car. I think that you are basically on your own when you are involved in a high impact accident in these cars.

That’s my feelings.

[goldie]

I installed a four-point harness in my woody/huckster. All structure from the windshield back is wood. Belts are anchored to the floor with large bolts and backing plates. Wood is very thick lumber and I figure any impact that would pull these anchors out would be more than enough to crush the entire structure me included. The doors tend to swing open easily so I have installed backup latches. I did work in the auto racing safety equipment industry so I have a little knowledge. Putting in a four-point system eliminates having to attach to a "B" pillar, just go to the floor. I have learned to drive the A very defensively and installed very bright LED lights all around, short of putting a full roll cage I have done the best I can?

[Pete]

Originally Posted by goldie

I installed a four-point harness in my woody/huckster. All structure from the windshield back is wood. Belts are anchored to the floor with large bolts and backing plates. Wood is very thick lumber and I figure any impact that would pull these anchors out would be more than enough to crush the entire structure me included. The doors tend to swing open easily so I have installed backup latches. I did work in the auto racing safety equipment industry so I have a little knowledge. Putting in a four-point system eliminates having to attach to a "B" pillar, just go to the floor. I have learned to drive the A very defensively and installed very bright LED lights all around, short of putting a full roll cage I have done the best I can?

You did not learn to attach the shoulder belts to the floor from the racing saftey industry. That is the best and easiest way to get a compression fracture of the spine in a roll over wreck.