Many things can go wrong with a seat belt, but having a seat belt that doesn’t lock is perhaps the most frustrating. You may be experiencing this problem yourself. Perhaps you can hear the belt click into the latch but the actual latch does not clasp onto the belt. Lucky for you, there are things you can do to fix this annoying situation. Read on to find out.
One likely reason you are having this issue is that there is something stuck in the actual seat belt buckle. Using a screwdriver or something flat and pointy such as a butter knife, poke around the entrance of the buckle. Something little such as a pebble, hairpin, or the like may have become lodged into the mechanism and been the cause of the problem all along!
If you find nothing embedded into the seat belt buckle, it may just be some grime buildup inside of it. Try shooting some lubricant—WD-40 or Tri-Flow should do the job—into the seat belt buckle. Hopefully, that will allow whatever is gummed up inside to disperse.
If that doesn’t work either, you may have a greater issue at hand. You may have to entirely replace the seat belt buckle if you ever want it to lock properly again. What you’ll need to do is unclip the plastic shroud that is located on the right side of the seat once it is out of the car. After that, the buckle should pivot on a 14 mm bolt. Some people choose to buy a replacement buckle at a junkyard, while others buy one at the dealer.
Of course, you also have the option of shipping your seat belts to a professional company if you don’t want to go through all the effort yourself. Rather than spending your entire paycheck at a dealer, or facing the risks of purchasing a junkyard seat belt, you can turn to the company Safety Restore. Safety Restore can fix your locked seat belt for an affordable price and fast runaround time. After getting your seat belt repair there, you’ll no longer have to tell your passengers that the seat belt won’t stay buckled!