Drivers side seatbelt

[XenonVXR]

Hi guys

So since I’ve had the car my drivers side seatbelt doesn’t seem to want to retract, or if it does it’s stupidly slow the amount of times I’ve trapped it in the door is unreal, I’ve tried spraying polish on it but it lasted the whole of an hour, what do you guys suggest?


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[CoolStory]

Pull the belt all the way out and spray furniture polish on it both sides. Work it in and out a few times and it should improve it.


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[L11FKR]

exactly what CoolStory has said I had to do mine a few times but it gets better and better every time you do it

[XenonVXR]

Okay I’ll have to give it another go then, tired it before and like I say worked for about an hour wasn’t sure if the mechanism had a fault of not, thanks guys!


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[CoolStory]

You’ll more than likely find it’s lint stuck on one of the rollers. Ideally you’d be better taking it apart and cleaning it all. Of course the mechanism could be just worn out. Rare though


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[Noxious89123]

Furniture polish? Not sure I'd want that all over my clothes tbh.

I had the exact same problem, with my drivers side belt, I did a bit of digging and went with one of the 2 methods recommended on detailing world.

Put a bit of persil in a bucket, fill with hot water.
Unspool the entire belt, and use a bulldog clip or clothes pegs near the top to stop it retracting.
With the door open and the bucket next to the sill, put the belt into the soapy water. Works best if you agitate it a bit rather than just leaving it to soak. My belt was pretty minging, so I used a soft nail brush on the belt as well, but you want to do this really gently; you don't want the belt to start fraying or otherwise damage it.
Chuck the water away and refill the bucket with hot water (no soap). Rinse the soap off the belt. (I did this more than once).
Leave the belt to dry naturally.

I did this during the last heatwave, and just left the windows on the car cracked open. Was dry in about an hour, and the belt retracts like it should now!

The other suggested cleaning method on detailing world was to use an APC suitably diluted, sprayed onto the belt and wiped off with a microfibre. The soiling on my belt was quite bad, plus I didn't have any APC, so persil won out for me!

As always, test cleaning solutions on a small inconspicuous area first, to make sure it doesn't affect the colour. I have blue belts in my GSi, and suffered no loss of colour. (Other than removal of the brown filth that was on the belt!).

It was actually someone at work that suggested I could fix the belt simply by cleaning it; I didn't expect it would work as the belt really didn't have much "pull" at all, but cleaning it worked great!

[CoolStory]

To be fair you don’t get furniture polish on your clothes unless you’re a big fat ******* because you pull the seat belt all the way out. But it can sometimes be only a temporary fix


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[Noxious89123]

Oh I see, you're only spraying polish on the very end of the belt, the first part to "reel in".

I think the previous owner of my car must have been a fan of fake tan, or was otherwise just a grubby bugger!