900 Seatbelt Interchange

[Sam]

The driver seatbelt on my 89 spg is shot, a piece of it is cracked off. It looks like the seatbelts from my parts car which was an 88turbo are not compatible. I believe my 89 was converted at some point to remove the annoying automatic belt system that it came with. I noticed that the seat belts it has now seem to be compatible with 9000 belts because i had a 9000 buckle lying around that I threw on when the pass buckle stopped working.

Anyway, i'd like to just use my 88 set since they came from a car with only 90,000 miles on it vs this spg which has over 180,000. Are the install points for the floor mounted belts still there on an 89?

Also, followup question. What is the easiest way to get the leather shift gaitor off a 900. Do i really need to disconnect the shift ball itself? I could replace the whole shifter/ignition body but thats an awful lot of work just to replaced a ripped gaitor.

[hutch]

I'm not certain as I've never owned an 89 but I know those were updated to use 9000 style seats as you found so my guess is you'll need to find a seatbelt out of an 89 or 90. Which is to say good luck with that. They are a one year only affair that mounts near the seat like an 88 and before but uses the same 'clip' as a 9000. Having now owned 2 90 cars I can tell you that they are extremely hard to find so if you ever see one in a junkyard grab it because you will likely need it down the road. You can also use a receiver from the rear seat as they are often barely used but take note that it will be a bit shorter in height but it's not an issue. You could also swap in a whole seat from a 9000 since the belt receiver is bolted to the seat.

All that may be wrong for an 89 as like I said I've never owned one but Saab did a lot of weird one year only things and it sounds like a similar issue to the 90 cars. I do believe the mounting points are different as I looked to swap an entire assembly in my old SPG and it didn't seem to work unless you welded things in.

As for the gear shift, I believe they just come off once you take the knob off, probably easiest to do while still in the car but if not just put it in a vice and pull up on the knob. If you are just replacing the whole thing from one car to another just put it in nuetral, pull the leather off the console and it's only 3 bolts to remove/install. Put a little grease on the ball to keep it shifting smoothly.

[Sam]

Thanks, lots of good info there. This 89 has the receiver bolted to the side of the seat, but here's a question. When I replaced the passenger side belt receptacle there was a wire coming off. So someone already replaced the receiver. The receivers for these later belts seem to be crap. IN the picture below, you can just see the bigger blockier 9000 buckle with the auto belt setup. Perhaps I can cobble together my belt with some 9000 parts. Wow this is unfortunate... I'll still search for the older mount points on the 89 as maybe there was some crossover

[hutch]

Hmm well maybe that means all of what I said is irrelevant. If it bolts to the side of the seat then maybe you can just get a receiver from a 9000 seat which should be more readily available. Or a nice set of 9000 aero seats if that's your sort of thing.