The four seat belts in between the bucket seats on the Aquamist car were always, for lack of a better word, stiff. I finally got the motivation to do something about them. Took them out of the car and put them in a bucket of hot water and laundry detergent. The water almost immediately turned brown. After a 1/2 hour the water was nearly black! I agitated them periodically, I took them out, scrubbed them and hoses them off. What a difference! The date code and certification labels were brown. They're now white! And the belts are supple soft now. They honestly look brand new now. Amazing!
I did the same with my Wildcat backseat belts a few weeks ago @buick64203 Used Simple Green that turned simply black...yikes... I must have soaked and scrubbed them 4 times before the water was just cloudy. Clearly they had spent most of their life under the seat, not on it...
Jason, I have read that.... pressure washing old seatbelts works really well. Not the really high pressure like 3500 PSI, rather around 2000 to 2500 PSI. I have also had good results with simple green, but it takes longer.
Just curious if 50 year old seatbelts still work properly? Might be time to buy some reproductions? I'm guilty of this too, mine are original as well. I had a pretty bad accident back in 1998. An incident with a curb in the fog at about 30mph. I fixed the car (new frame!) and replaced the belts because they say you stretch them out in an accident. But the replacements were from a junkyard, so same age parts (from a non-crashed car).
