Static Seat Belt Fetish

The Rovering Member

Well-Known Member
I've got a bit of one at the moment as l quite like the secure feeling when driving with the more 'sporty' type restraint (& we'll take that no further :hmm:). So l just picked these two up from the same 'bay seller. I messaged him with an offer for the two & he accepted & relisted the pair with a BIN price. Very nice:

s-l400.jpg20210324_171439.jpg
20210324_160243.jpg

I have a pair of this style Irving belt in the rear of Bruiser & a pair of the parachute buckled belts in the front. In my P5B l have one parachute belt but the drivers belt was replaced by a nondescript inertia by a PO so this could be the new drivers belt but l'll probably swap them round & have it as the passenger belt. It has no fittings so if anyone has a spare set then let me know.
I like the other one very much & it's destined for the rear of my Oxford Traveller. There are NOS BMC black belts in the front so it won't match but l'm not bothered by that personally & of course there's just the one too, so of course unless l can find another of them (no sign online) l'll have a mismatched pair in the rear too when l find another nice suitable belt. But again, this doesn't bother me.
Parachute Irving belts have gone a bit silly pricewise as they get listed for Mini Coopers & such. And if any belts get listed for Ferrari's or Porsche's....etc, then look out, it's four figure territory. :oops:
For some reason my wife can't seem to share my appreciation of my new acquisitions.
Funny that. :LOL:
 
No no, that's in the lean-to which wasn't supposed to become my workshop but obviously did, especially when she had me become the antique & curiosity restorer for her business. ;)
 
They didn't affect dinner, a jolly tasty meatloaf.
I also received these today, new front spring pans for my Oxford:

20210324_180523.jpg
The observant amongst you will see they're A55 & not A60. This is because you can't get new A60 pans but the only difference between them is the A60 ARB mount was added onto the A55 pan. So you cut off the mount from the old 60 pan & weld it onto the new 55 pan, & et voilà!
One of the specialists is doing this but they're over £200 exchange with shipping. So Steve is sending the old pans back to me & l'll put them in the hands of my brother to make the transformation. He doesn't know yet so mum's the word. ;)
The reason you can get A55 pans is that the FX4 taxi used the same set-up & so, as it transpires, do the big Healey's. These are FX4, thicker metal than the Farina pans & £88 the pair. The Healey ones are a bit cheaper still but l didn't find that out until afterwards & anyway, l'm not sure they're Taxi thickness so l'd rather have these if that's the case.
I was also able to get a pair of taxi bumpstops for £25 rather than £25 each from the Farina specialists. I bought a new pair of springs & the worn out fixed track rod which is unobtainable is being replaced with a suitable adjustable item. A pair of secondhand tie rods came from a club member for £20. The whole list l needed supplied from a specialist came to the thick end of £600. I managed to get fairly close to halving that.

On the new Irving belt, it has this label:

20210324_160351.jpg

I don't suppose this means the belt was destined for export. I imagine they all said that.
 
Last edited:
When i used my P6 daily, i had it with static belts at front for a few years. While you can reach almost all the controls without problems, i could not reach the window winder without making the belt slack enough. In the end i got sick of it and replaced them with retractable ones. Thankfully i have never had to test them.
 
Hopefully l won't either. Though l can't see the split-second it takes an inertia belt to lock making too much of an effect on the different body reactions to the two types of belt.
And there's always the, admittedly, extremely remote chance of the inertia belt failing to lock at all in an accident.
 
I fitted harnesses to a car, worst mistake ever. To be properly restrained in a non inertia set up the belts need to be tight, if you can reach the dash switches to operate them then you are going to contact something with your head or chest in an accident. Car I had used an umbrella type handbrake under the dash, I could not operate it with the belts correctly set, nor any of the switches.

Just my humble op. This is the reason my racy looking car still has inertia belts.
 
Ohh nasty, someone sawed mine in half, then stapled it back together :oops: that took a while to heal
Could be worse ..... a friend had that done, joined the zipper club, that went as expected, trouble was they took their eyes off the ball and whilst he was recovering he had a reaction to Heparin the blood thinning drug they gave him, his legs got starved of blood, got black and when they found out had to be removed to save his life.
Not a good day at the office !
 
i could not reach the window winder without making the belt slack enough.

My Irving belts on Hazel have a slackening buckle in the middle of the chest belt that you can just flip up & then you can move freely; you just pull the belt end again to tighten it. I appreciate it's not quite as easy as an inertia belt, but it's pretty close :)
 
This is how my belts were too, Phil. However, in our climate i had to regulate the window opening quite often while driving. Not to mention the dense toll stations while on the motorway. As you say it was easy enough, but since i have managed to fit inertia belts, i never looked back.
 
in our climate i had to regulate the window opening quite often while driving.

Not something we have too much problem with in the 'North of England' :LOL: although I do like to have the quarterlight open much of the time, so that would give the same problem!
 
I've gone modern for the rear of my P5. Well, £53 for all three was too much to resist. Listed for the P5 too:

20210407_174103.jpg
 
Last edited:
I also received these today, new front spring pans for my Oxford:

View attachment 19045

The observant amongst you will see they're A55 & not A60. This is because you can't get new A60 pans but the only difference between them is the A60 ARB mount was added onto the A55 pan. So you cut off the mount from the old 60 pan & weld it onto the new 55 pan, & et voilà!
One of the specialists is doing this but they're over £200 exchange with shipping. So Steve is sending the old pans back to me & l'll put them in the hands of my brother to make the transformation. He doesn't know yet so mum's the word. ;)
The reason you can get A55 pans is that the FX4 taxi used the same set-up & so, as it transpires, do the big Healey's. These are FX4, thicker metal than the Farina pans & £88 the pair. The Healey ones are a bit cheaper still but l didn't find that out until afterwards & anyway, l'm not sure they're Taxi thickness so l'd rather have these if that's the case.

Here are the spring pans after my brother has done his stuff along with the rusty original donors:

20210415_201923.jpg
20210416_133529.jpg

He's learned a thing or two over the years.

Now to dispatch them to God's Own County to be put into their rightful place. :)
 
Well, l did try but resistance was futile so after l had watched a while & they had been round once then got re-listed, l couldn't keep myself from those buckles any longer & put in an offer or three until one was accepted:

20210512_082327.jpg
20210512_075332.jpg
20210512_074407.jpg

The top one has a layer of dust on the exposed part of the belt caused, l assume, by being displayed like that for many years. The seller had the other one out before me for photos. I don't know why l gain such pleasure from the packaging, it's very sad. Made in The Broadway, Hendon, which l know tolerably well, in 1967.
The instructions give special mention to the Hillman lmp:

20210512_075806_1.jpg

I think these are now the rear belts for my Oxford estate which will be in Yorkshire for a while longer than l anticipated as she really needs new inner sills & front outriggers & the man to do the job has a couple of Farina's on his list already as well as a pub to run. So it looks like it'll be at least the Autumn before l can collect her. Still, she's up & running with new engine & diff though the carburetter has been sent off for a complete rebuild which l posted about elsewhere.
I've also collected a spare rear seat back in the correct colour (gratis) which is a little bit damaged on the offside but that's of no consequence as l'm planning on cutting it in half to make a split seat for a rear passenger plus loadspace when needed, so not a permanent feature but to be swapped in when required.
Incidentally, the guy l got the seat from has really done a number on his estate including turbocharging the totally stock 1622 'B' series. He said he's done all the mathematics & is confident it'll work. It's no thrown together job either, it's a beautiful work of art. Recovered A55 bench seat in the front which is nice, scratchbuilt boost gauge in the style of the original clocks, Webasto sunroof, lowered on air suspension with split & narrowed TR6 wheels upfront, same on the rear but widened, pressed & shaped aluminium door trims....the list goes on, the work is superb & all done by him. Not quite a sleeper but subtle, very subtle. A lovely thing & l look forward to seeing it at a show.
I also picked up an undamaged dashtop for the Oxford from Oxford that day & had my first sit inside a big Farina. Lovely cars, he has two, totally different animals to the four-pots. One a Westminster (IIRC), original & spotless inside & out with that lovely straight-six up to Big Healey spec' which apparently pulls like a train. Superb!

Meanwhile over in Newbury the Bruiser Project is on the back-burner for a bit while Rich gets on with other customers vehicles & l beef up my finances ready for the next assault on them.
 
Last edited:
I found these over Chelmsford boot sale at the weekend:

20210606_184538.jpg

A nice Lucas spotlight but favourites are a pair of home-modded bullet mirrors with a rather good rat finish which could have occured naturally or was perhaps speeded up by the modder, they were pretty rusty inside anyway. They should sort the restricted vision l get from the bonnet-mounted bullets l have on original Bruiser at present & l do like them a lot:

20210607_165255.jpg

20210607_164743.jpg

20210607_164547.jpg

The guy is actually a dealer in interesting objects & antiquities of any sort who we've bought from before. One of a limited number there but definitely the best. Prices are quite keen too, l gave him £35 for mirrors & light & we got some stock for the wife's shop too.

I've settled finances for the Oxford estate with Steve, just up to date as there is more to do, mainly the welding which won't be happening just yet so l'll shortly give Rich the go-ahead to resume work on the Bruiser Project again once he's got a gap between the VW campers residing in his workshop at present. Got to keep the plates spinning, after all. ;)
 
“Made in The Broadway, Hendon, which l know tolerably well, in 1967.”

TRM,
I grew up on the Broadway in Hendon. My mum still lives there. Small world.
I have many happy memories of various mischief making along that stretch of the A5.
 
Back
Top