L400 - How to Fix the Locking Lapbelt for Child Seat?

[psilosin]

Background: My 1995 L400 has, on each of the second row captain seats, a lapbelt seperate from the normal 3point seatbelt, that ratchets/locks as it retracts for the purpose of easily and safely securing a car seat.

To function the belt you pull it all the way out and then it ratchets back in until tight on teh carseat. Once it is ratcheting back in it can only go in not out and thus safely secures a car seat. If the seatbelt fully retracts it releases the lock and you can pull it out and start again...at least it is supposed to.

The Problem: I just changed from the infant car seat to the next stage and the lapbelt fully retracted but did not unlock. So now I cannot pull it out at all to re-secure the new carseat. Temp solution was to install the carseat on the other captain chair but I do not like it there and would like to fix the other belt.

Any ideas? I imagine its a friggy diggy pain in the arse...

[Artacoma]

Just happened to me today in fact .... seat belt retracted and wouldn't extend on the drivers seat.
Had to drive home without a belt on .
Took the belt assembly out with no small amount of cursing and partially disassembled it and cleaned it out and reassembled .
There is a too weak little spring in the assembly that resets the little rocker that locks the belt when the vehicle is jarred .
My belt is working now but I don't have a lot of confidence that it won't jam up again.
Now I have a flapping wall panel that won't remount to the plastic clips.

[mapleridge818]

Now I have a flapping wall panel that won't remount to the plastic clips.

If you pull the wall panel back and look at the clips, there are metal clips, that slide over the plastic tabs on the wall panel. When you pull the wall panel off the side of the van, the metal clips often stay in the slots in the side of the van. You will never get those clips to go back in place, unless you get the metal clips out of the side of the van, and slide them back onto the plastic tabs on the wall panel. Use a pair of side cutters to get the metal clips out of the slots. Just went through all that today doing rear a speaker install.