any suggestions on how to clean seat belts? Pulled out my backseat and found the complete set has been hidden under there since at least 2002 (when I bought the car). They are filthy!
I actually ran mine through the dishwasher when the wife was not home. Worked good. Just weave the webbing around the tines to keep them from flopping around. I ran it through twice with extra Cascade soap. Only once with the drying cycle.
68' Firebird 400 convertible, numbers matching, solar red w/ deluxe parchment interior. 66' Pontiac Ventura Hardtop 66' Pontiac Catalina Convertible
There was thread about cleaning and dyeing seat belts a year or so ago, but I think was to the effect of soaking in a bucket of soapy water overnight then hand scrubbing with a brush and rinsing.
-=>Lee<=- Due to budget constraints the "light at the end of the tunnel" has been turned off!
I went through this just recently. I looked up a bunch of old posts. I had a few set of belts from different cars. One pair was damp and sitting in a zip lock bag for the last 6 years. They smelled up my whole garage.
I put the seat belts in a plastic bucket with a mild detergent I use for washing clothes (All detergent in this case). I heated a up a big pan of boiling water and dumped it in and stired it around. I did this 3-4 times. Each time I dumped it the water was black.
2nd thing I did was take each belt and scrubed them with a soft bristle brush. You need to be carfull around the white patch as it was easily rip off when its wet. After I scrubbed them I rinsed then in the sink and laid them out flate outside to dry. They looked pretty good at this point.
3rd thing I did was use the SEM vynile dye. This made the material very stiff and difficult to move through the adjuster. The wife did this part and I think she sprayed them very heavy.
Last I polished the metal buckles with the dremal buffing wheel and polishing compund. Mine had lots of rust and pits, but cleaned up pretty well.
I did the same as others have already suggested. Placed them in a bucket, poured some Tide in there and added a pan of HOT water. Let them soak overnight (buckles and all) and in the morning laid them in the driveway and let the sun dry them out. Then I used WD-40 and sprayed the buckles as they were seized in place and you could not slide them to adjust. After a few minutes of pulling and pushing the material back and forth, they freed up and were good to go!
