Rob,
     You may find that dirt and dust is jammed in this seat belt spool
and keeping it from working.  Remove, all this garbage, clean everything
and go from there.
                                   Eric

Rob Campbell wrote:

> On a related tangent...
>
> Is it possible to adjust the retraction force on the seatbelt without
> replacing it?  Mine are just weak enough to be annoying but not weak
> enough to replace.  If it is possible to adjust, how involved of a job
> is this?  The belt material iteself is in great shape, no fraying...
> but it only retracts about 1/2 of the slack and then care must be
> taken not to shut the belt in the door etc.
>
>
>
> Eric Zeno wrote:
>
>> I'll be had on this one. On my 1986 and newer Vanagons the
>> front seat belt spools are covered by this big strainge plastic thing.
>> My older 1980 Vanagon did not have this.  I'm sick of reaching over the
>> thing to unlock the sliding door, from the front pass. door, when you
>> don't have the key handy.  So I took it off.  What I found was the
>> exact thing that was on the older Vanagons. After removing the spool
>> I found that there is a metal plate below, that was installed just to
>> hold
>> the platic. I reinstall the spool and have had no adverse effects, so
>> far.
>> Now what is this for?    What a waste of money!
>>
>>
>>            Eric                   86-VW4x4
>>            vw4x4@fyi.net          86-SS Syncro
>>            Pittsburgh, PA USA     1936-Chrysler
>>                                   92-Jetta GWC
>>            www.fyi.net/~vw4x4/vw4x4.htm
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>