Ch 8.7: Inside Seat Belts

The front center seat belt support comes from the aluminum tube that was already installed in the front center heat duct in Ch 6.  For the rear, the remaining aft portion of the heat duct is built and the same style aluminum tube is used.

Aft heat duct assembled with 7-ply reinforcement
curing over seat belt attach tube.

The difference with the aft heat duct is that it has a rear part that angles up to meet the LG bulkhead and also includes a fiberglass tube "transition piece" that has to be fabricated and installed.

Here you can see the aft heat duct assembled and the 7-ply reinforcement of glass lay'ed up on top and over the seat belt attach tube just like I did in Ch 6.

Next I built the transition piece using a left over piece of urethane foam. This piece connects the heat duct to the heat supply that will come from a heat muff on the engine exhaust pipe. This is how you can keep you toes warm in the winter or at high altitudes.

I shaped it, covered it with box tape for release, and applied 2-ply BID. To the right is is the transition piece after removing the foam from inside and prior to cutting to length.  To the left is the piece installed in the duct.

Baker Cozy Unique:  

Remember, I widened the seat back brace to allow for a wider map pocket up front.  We'll since the duct is only half that width, I had to add some foam up front to create a pleasant looking transition to the wider base of the seat back brace.  I just added some small pieces of foam on each side, shaped for a nice transition, and glassed with 2ply BID. 

Installation:  
The part is installed per normal (flox, 2 BID tape the seams, ect) and then an additional 7-ply reinforcement is added across the seat belt attachment tube and along the floor approx 6".  I tried this as one 7-ply layup and it worked ok but I didn't anticipate that the 7 layers of glass would be hard to lay down correctly over the attachment tube.  I got it down ok with no air bubbles but was worried for a little bit.  This is also done on the front seat and I did it the same way...probably shouldn't have...I wasn't as lucky getting it all down properly and had a few air bubbles to fill.  I also widened and lengthened each piece of glass by 1/2 " to allow for a smooth transition of the layers.  The black lines you see are my sharpie marks for cutting.  You can see that the plys got a little unruly while laying them down but it came out ok.  I don't know how some builders get such neat, straight, and pretty glass work...I just can't seem to do it.


TIP:  If I were to do it over again, I would follow a tip from Marc Z in the archives and split the length of the plys so that I could lay up alternating plys on each side and get each ply to lay down correctly across the top, overlapping them from each side across the width of the duct.  You'll have 7 ply's on the floor but 14 on top of the duct.

Ok....seat belt attachments done...time to check back in with the headrest.

cab