69 super bee missing shoulder belts

[696pack]

My 69 Super Bee has no shoulder belts.

This could be explained by them simply having been removed at some point. However it certainly appears that this car has the ORIGINAL headliner in it and there are no holes for the bolt that would hold the shoulder belt into the welded in nut under it.

Can someone give me a measurement for where the nut is under the headliner so I can feel through the headliner to see if it is there.

This is very odd as my car is a very late car per the V.I.N. and matching time frame date code on the K member which is 1589 and decodes to June 7, 1969and shoulder belts became STANDARD on 1/1/68.

Has anyone else ever encountered a 69 car WITHOUT shoulder belts?

 

[mopar71340]

re: missing belts

Well as far as i can remember every 1969 i ever encountered had them. they were notorious for the elastic webbing getting dried out & brittle, hence if someone bought the car they probably removed them , because they would sag down and practically choke you while trying to get out of the car.They probably added a new headliner to boot sometime along the way. my car was built 2/11/1969 & has them. Another thing to look for is the recievers under the sun visors to clip the belt onto. If i remember correctly you should be able to feel the mounts 1/4 of the way above the 1/4 glass going towards the back & around 2-3 inches up.
Federal regulations had these as you stated by 1968 so theres no possible way this car got built for the states without them. Was it exported & brought back in?

 

[696pack]

Well as far as i can remember every 1969 i ever encountered had them. they were notorious for the elastic webbing getting dried out & brittle, hence if someone bought the car they probably removed them , because they would sag down and practically choke you while trying to get out of the car.They probably added a new headliner to boot sometime along the way. my car was built 2/11/1969 & has them. Another thing to look for is the recievers under the sun visors to clip the belt onto. If i remember correctly you should be able to feel the mounts 1/4 of the way above the 1/4 glass going towards the back & around 2-3 inches up.
Federal regulations had these as you stated by 1968 so theres no possible way this car got built for the states without them. Was it exported & brought back in?

Yes, it is possible that the headliner was replaced but if it was it was done a loooong time ago. As I said, it certainly looks like the original.

The car is an A12 car and built for the U.S. market, has the original B/S and fender tag and there is nothing out of the ordinary on either that would indicate that the car was built without the shoulder belts.

There are no receivers under the sun visors either, but of course if the belt had been there and remove I am sure that whoever did it would have removed them as well. I guess that this is most likely the case and since I did not buy the car new or have any history back to the original owner I will never know. A lot of things can happen over 40 years.

 

[kidsixpack]

Very interesting! Could they have been factory deleted and not be on the build shee? I've never seen one (A12) without shoulder belts, but you never know? The headliner may have been replaced and the old belts were just not good enough to use. It would be a lot esier to delete them then to find a nice pair.
KID

 

[696pack]

Very interesting! Could they have been factory deleted and not be on the build shee? I've never seen one (A12) without shoulder belts, but you never know? The headliner may have been replaced and the old belts were just not good enough to use. It would be a lot esier to delete them then to find a nice pair.
KID

There is a place to delete belts on the B/S and there is a code (C04) to delete them. However that code is to delete ALL standard belts and my car has the seat belts just not the shoulder belts. Also it is not marked as belts delete on the B/S. I would think that if the shoulder belts only were deleted they would be indicated so in either the line 11 or in the remarks area. Again, nothing on my sheet.

This only leaves three possibilities:
1. They were just forgotten during assembly.
2. They forgot to weld in the attaching not so belts didn't get installed.
3. They were removed after delivery and the headliner has been replaced.

My guess is #3 but I thought I would ask and see if anyone else had ever encounter this since the headliner APPEARS to be original.

I still have to feel around through the headliner for the attaching nut to eliminate # 2.

 

[69 Runner]

Darryl, I've owned a bunch of B's, and I've never had (or seen) a 69 that didn't have the shoulders, unless the headliner had been replaced and they weren't put back.

BUT, as previously stated, anything could have happened while it was being built. But it's hard to imagine a dealership would have sold it like that

 

[696pack]

Darryl, I've owned a bunch of B's, and I've never had (or seen) a 69 that didn't have the shoulders, unless the headliner had been replaced and they weren't put back.

BUT, as previously stated, anything could have happened while it was being built. But it's hard to imagine a dealership would have sold it like that

Having sold Dodges new from 1968-74 I can tell you that stranger thing happened. I remember receiving a Dart that had Scamp emblems on one side and Dart emblems on the other. We also had cars come in that were missing ordered options or part of a package. Basically things that they were short on when the car got to that point on the line. They would just wait until they got a claim from the dealer and then they would send the parts and pay the claim to the dealer. They certainly didn't make us aware of the shortage. If it slipped by the dealer then there was no cost to the manufacturer. Since there was a belt delete option it apparently would not have been considered a liability by the Corp.

Although the above is a possibile explaination I still DOUBT that this is what happened, but we will just never know in this case.

Beyond what I have written above, it was also quite common for dealers to receive a car with a vinyl top that was not ordered, not on the window sticker, or the fender tag. The reason was that the lead joint on the "C" pillar were sometimes really sloppy and if they got by an inspector prior to paint they would slap a top on rather than fix it and repaint. In every example that we recieved we could feel and often times SEE the sloppy work under the top.

 

[69hemibeep]

Darryl. The bolt holes are in line with the center of the dome light! I just looked at mine in the body shop.

 

[696pack]

Darryl. The bolt holes are in line with the center of the dome light! I just looked at mine in the body shop.

Thanks, I'll check it and report back