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Reply to "1972 Pantera seat belts"

Be gentle with stock seat belt buckles. The entire stock buckle assembly is held in place by the plastic cap and plastic legs with barbs on their ends, that snap into the die cast metal base. Constant spring pressure from the design for 50 years causes a gradual buildup of stress in the plastic cap & legs, such that suddenly one day the whole buckle pops apart in your hands. This is similar to stock plastic window gear & headlight gear failures. There are ways to repair the belt failure (if you found all the metal pieces) that do NOT involve Superglue- which will rapidly fail again. But that does little good when it happens on the road- as it did to me (passenger side) when Judy was driving.

Or- worst case, minutes after such a failure, a cop stops you for his own reasons and finds you are NOT wearing your seat belt... because it broke. At best a fix-it ticket will be your inconvenient Christmas gift. To fix stockers, a few years ago Larry Stock tooled up to produce belt repair parts as one of his shop services.

Or, the jump-seat buckle from an '80s Ford extended cab pickup has a belt & end that is of a size & length that fits the rest of a Pantera's stock belt/harness, and contains a belt stiffener that holds it erect between console & seat just like optional '70s Gr-3 seat belts/harnesses. For junkyard scavengers, it bolts to the Ford with a metric Torx round-head screw that can thread into the Pantera floor & accept a stock round plastic cover. Or use a stock hex bolt. For purists, the pickup buckle is NOT microscopically as-stock and probably is a different brand (?- I've never looked). It will be a decade or two fresher thus safer, too.

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