Seatbelt Swap

WARNING:  Seatbelts are a safety critical part of your car.  Do you really want to mess with them?  I don't reccomend it.  Get a professional to do the work and be safe.

So I went insane and swapped my U.S. seatbelts to the Canadian ones.  That isn't hard.  I decided to remove all unnecessary wires from the car that supported the automatic seatbelts. That was both hard and stupid.

I don't have many pictures of the start of the removal because I was about half way done when I relaized I should document the carnage.
The parts you will need are: the Canadian seat belts, and the three trim panels on each side.  The over the door piece, the B pillar piece, and the rear seat side piece.  Each is different from the U.S. version.  You also need a Canadian headliner.  I don't have one.  The U.S. headliner has been trimmed back to make room for the automatic seatbelt track.  I would guess that JDM interior panels are the same as the Canaidan ones but I don't know that for a fact.

Here are a couple of pictures with the trim panels removed showing the automatic seatbelt parts.  Do you like where I hid my subs?


If you leave the wiring alone the swap is quite simple.  Take the interior panels off.  Be careful or you will break clips off of the plastic, they a're getting old and a little brittle. You don't need to remove the dashboard to remove the over the door trim panel.  It just snaps in place.  Take out the rear seat.  There are a couple of bolts hidden under the carpet on the back of the seat near the hinges.  Remove the seats and the door sill panels.  Lift the carpet and you will find the lap belt mechanisim.  The Canadian seat belts seem to click into the U.S. shoulder belt location just fine.

Swap in the new hardware.  I forgot to take a picture of the seatbelts installed but without the trim in place.  So shoot me.

Here are the old parts you don't need any more, and the proper place to store them.


There are extra holes in the carpet for the U.S. seatbelt stuff.  I wish I had changed the seatbelts before I did my carpet swap so they wouldn't be there.

The finished swap.  Notice the gap between the headliner and the door trim.  I'm not sure what I'm going to do about it yet.  It doesn't bother me much.  Also notice the filth on the window.  I hadn't washed my car in over three months.


The Insane and Stupid Part

When I decided to remove the wires I thought it would take a little while.  It took a day to do it right.  Unwrapping the wiring harness, removing the offensive wires, and rewrapping the wiring harness while in cramped quarters was no fun at all.  While I was in there I took out the stock speaker wires and cleaned up the audio wiring harness.  The only wires left in the center console for audio are the antenna signal wire, ignition power and battery power.  Much nicer.  As all of my interior work, step one is to remove the interior including the dashboard.  At least I'm getting good at it.

A photo montage of the wiring removal.  The wires in my hand are the ones that I removed.  Removing the fuse box and super multiple junction was a barrel o' laughs.  Look at those weight savings.  I took out at least two pounds of wires in only ten hours.  Onthe closeup of the center console you can see the new audio wiring harness.  It's draped over next to the shifter.