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Kozican	I dont know about the rest of the country but down here we're hearing an aweful lot of negative feedback on a particular seat belt from Chrysler......Anyone know if the Prowler has the "ball bearing" safety tested seat belts?
spoons	Kozican, Click Here to see a "real" Prowler crash test with seat belts. Brian This message has been edited by spoons on 05-20-2003 at 01:59 PM
YellowFever	Brian, One crash doesn't make or break a seat belt. I've talked with troopers that said what saved someones life was the fact they were ejected from the car and not wearing a belt. Someone else aslo asked about airbags being safe or not. My brother in law was in a mild head-on that deployed his airbags (1st generation, I think). He was holding onto the sterring wheel with both hands and the blast from it broke both his thumbs. Yes, it probably saved his life but, it is dangerous. He said it was also deafening loud. Koz, what is the deal with the belts in question?
Kozican	YF, The seat belts Ive been hearing about come unbuckled easy. They do a ball bearing test on the release button by running it across the top. If it releases by doing this test, it fails. According to the news program I saw was that there were accidental releases during an accident due to the release button being bumped or hit. The safe ones they were describing had the release button recessed into the housing of the buckle to prevent the accidental release.
idive	I know that years ago, GM had put seatbelts out that, when your hip bumped the inside of the buckle in a wreck, they would unlatch. This was detailed on something like 20/20 one night. I went out to my S-10 Blazer and tapped the inside of the latched buckle with a crescent wrench and sure enough, it opened right up. They never did a recall on them, in part, because of the millions of seatbelts involved. It was my understanding that a change was made to those seatbelts in the following years to prevent this. My S-10 was a '87. I THINK they went up to about '92 on the bad seatbelts, but I can't say with any certainty just what years were involved. I haven't heard of the ball bearing test deal before. This sounds like a problem with the release button extending up too far over the latch cover? I Also had a recall notice on my '92 Grand Voyager some time back on the seatbelts. It was a 2 part recall. Part 1 was to change the anchor for the middle row seatbelt by the sliding door. Part 2 was to do something to the latch on both front seatbelts. According to the part # shown on my recall receipt, the only parts used to perform the recall were to fix the anchor problem ONLY. I kept calling the dealer back as well as DC to try and get them to fix the front belts as well and all they kept telling me was that the records show that recall number "such-n-such" was already performed on my vehicle and that they were not going to do anything further. They never have fixed my fronts.
Catwoman	http://www.seatbeltdefects.com/gen3/Default.htm Does this have something to do with it Don?
SuperKat	I have never had a Chrysler seat belt come unbuckled and I have driven them almost exclusively. But then, I have been able to keep the ball bearings out of the car when I drive. Still sleeping at night, Gordon
Joe Ruggiero	I saw that special on these GenIII seat belts and wondered the same thing about our Kats. I did try sitting in the car and depressed the red release button with my elbow. To my surprise, it popped right open. The problem, acording to the TV show, was that when you get tossed around in an accident, anything hitting the red release button can easily release the sely belt and when I tried it myself I found the same problem.