SharkByte

I finally got around to ripping the old interior out of my 81 and have most of the parts dyed and ready to go back in but I cannot get the outboard lower seat belt bolt to come loose. I've been soaking it in Rust Eater every day for about a week, I've wrenched at it with a ratchet with all my might I've even given it the old tap tap tap with a hammer that sometimes worked to loosen stuck bolts when I was a machinist but it will not budge. I've done pretty much everything short of drilling the thing out and buying a new bolt which may be my only option if I can't get it loose. Does anyone know any tricks to getting the seat belt bolts out? I know they aren't suppose to be easy but this is a tad bit much:)

thanks!

LemansBlue68

I ground the head off of one of my seatbelt bolts with a die grinder. It took a while but it worked. After getting the retractor out of the way I took the reinforcement plate loose from the fiberglass floor board and used an acetylene torch to heat the bolt stub up to red hot and used vise grips to back it out. Since you have steel floor boards in your '81 you can just heat the bolt stub up after you get the retractor (and anything else that you don't want to catch on fire) out of the way.

Another thought might be to use an air chisel with a flat headed hammer type bit and rap on the head of the bolt with that. Then try your wrench on it. The repeated rapping of the air chisel might knock the rust loose where a few hits with a hammer doesn't quite do it.

Big Fish

I drilled mine off using progressively larger drill bits until it was off, then just drill and re-tap the bolt hole. Keep in mind the bolts are shouldered as you probably already know from those that have been removed.