Hello, how are you? My wife isn't very tall, so she needs to move the seat almost all of the way froward to reach the pedals and steering wheel. She remembers the seat belt operated smoothly when we first bough the car in mid 2018. Ever since we got it back from the upholstery shop for the soft top installation she had problems with it sticking or not retracting all of the way.

I loosened a torx screw from the upper seat belt ring that attaches to the car body. I didn't loosen it too much, only enough to allow it to pivot slightly. I noticed a protrusion behind the ring that mates with a hole, possibly to prevent pivoting. Loosening that screw helped the seat belt to pull out and retract better, but I'm worried that it wasn't designed to be loosened and that by having it in that position it could potentially strip the threads from the pivoting motion over time, or it could loosen itself more, or fail to serve its purpose during an accident.

I keep calling it a ring because on my mother's jeep it was called the "upper seat belt ring," I'm not sure if shares the same name across models. I've tightened the screw to avoid worsening the problem. The seat belt operation is inconvenient when pulling at a perpendicular angle forward, even up to 45 degrees which is the direction my wife would need to pull with her seat all the way forward. My seat position is all most all the way back and I can pull at a parallel angle or straight down and experience a more smooth motion. The ring remains still when tightened.

Was that seat belt ring designed to pivot? Is it safe to loosen the screw, or will that be a detrimental solution? If the ring wasn't designed to pivot, can it be positioned so that the flat section of the " D " shape is slightly angled forward? Maybe I am focusing on the wrong thing and the problem is elsewhere?

Thank you and may you have a wonderful day!

 

Sounds to me like the seat belt may be twisted. Why not remove the B Pillar and take a look?

Someone here with a similar problem. Easy to fix though https://www.jaguarforum.com/showthread.php?t=78453&p=734354&viewfull=1#post734 354 (just read further down, he untwisted it and sent me a PM, now working fine )

 

Thank you so much. The belt doesn't appear to be twisted. On the 9th reply of the link you provided the last image shows the ring pivoting and that is very helpful. On the convertibles it is located much lower than on the coupes. I'll go loosen it again. The upholstery shop must have had to remove those then put them back on very tightly.