Originally Posted by ScumOne
I bought this seat belt set to replace some God awful orange latch seat belts the PO put in my 69 Firebird 400. My interior is red, the orange seat belts just looked awful.
So I contacted Ames and got the FA222 black set for the front bucket seats in September 2021. Due to my sudden heart health demise that required a heart transplant in March 2022, these never got installed. Then the body shop put them in while I was in Mayo Clinic, but since the car was getting major motor, AC, gauge and a whole bunch of other upgrades, it just wasn't driven.
I got my car back for a shakedown cruise last Friday, April 21st, 2023. I go to put the seat belts on, and they won't extend. And I mean AT ALL. After several tries (like 12) I figured out that these seat belts REQUIRE you to stretch the buckle out along the upper lines of the door window glass/underneath the headliner all the way to the windshield before you can get enough belt out to go over my whopping 6ft 2inch 185 pound frame.
Even then I screwed it up 4-5 times before they didn't lock up while stretching, and that you had to go VERY SLOWLY so they didn't lock up (like you were in a crash).
I drove the car last weekend, and I had to get out, and stretch the passenger side belts like I did on the driver's side so my wife's boobs would fit under the shoulder belt. Now, I'm not going to gripe that I got to do a "boob dive" on my wife to get the seat belts on, but it took 4 times to get it done and I damn near choked my wife with the shoulder belt positioning. Then I'd have to go back to the driver's side to and fight to get the belts on for two minutes.
Now look, my Bird has white paint with a red top. I'm not going to use it for doing a bank robbery but if I tried, I'd be caught in the parking lot trying not to get pulled over for not wearing a seat belt. Frigging ridiculous to say the last.
I called Ames, they said to call Seat Belts Plus. I called, they got a manager to call me back today.
This screwed up ritual to put the seat belt on is NOT a design flaw, according to their manager. Say What? That's right, they expect you to use two hands to pull your shoulder/lap belt out SLOWLY so it doesn't lock up on you trying to buckle it.
I was just amazed. The manager at Seat Belts Plus told me that was their aftermarket design, by choice. WTH?
I went back and called Ames. Keeghan was a nice guy, he checked with his return manager, he said I had 90 days to return them, period. The warranty is 1 year, even though the design is totally flawed and stupid. Keeghan checked and sure enough, they can't do anything for me but have me pay for new seat belts.
So I went back to SB +, they said you can inspect the belts and return them, but as soon as you mount them they are NON RETURNABLE.
Great...you can't even see how poorly they operate until you mount them, there are no notes at Ames about this design flaw/screwup, and no one wants to come to the table about replacing them, or making these work right, because the design is what they intended.
Long story short, I've got 18 month old belts with 188 miles on them that SUCK. No one wants to take 2-3 minutes out of their lives to put a seat belt on, right?
Now here's the kicker...after two days of dealing with these malfunction/poorly designed seat belts, they won't retract...
I don't know about the rest of you, but as far as I'm concerned, Seat Belts Plus has sold Ames some really poorly designed seat belts and didn't tell them that they are a total PITA to use.
But neither of them want to rectify the situation. They're just hoping I'll eat the $300 I spent for crappy seat belts, and order some more.
I gotta tell you, given this recent set of events and no solution in sight, I'm pretty pissed off that I donated $60 towards running this site a month or so back, since I've spent a fair amount of money with Ames, and they seem to have no pull with their vendors that design stupid, hard to use seat belts.
In summation, if you need new seat belts for your 69 Bird, don't even consider this crappy product from Ames Performance. I'm going to look for another solution before I give another dime to Ames Performance and I'll certainly not recommend or buy anything from Seatbeltsplus.com
Fair warning... caveat emptor, etc, etc.
This really stinks in my book...sure, I love my Bird, but to buy seat belts TWiCE since Ames vendors design crappy parts? Uh, no...shame on Ames, and double shame on seatbeltsolutions.com for making an utterly worthless, time consuming product...BY DESIGN. Who does this kind of crap?
Jim
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