Howdy,

I have a 94 Mazda Protege LX and the seat belt on the drivers side hangs. When I open the door, it goes up then around the curve then hangs a few inches after that. I took a small screw driver and sort of slid it up through the channel and I can't feel any sort of blockage or anything that it could hang on. It is also well oiled.

I removed some of the plastic covers, which could almost be a thread unto itself, and it has a cable that goes from the motor to the slide bar that the belt goes across. Could the cable be bad? The motor sounds fine when it is moving.

Anyone else run into this before? Any ideas? Also, I checked rockauto but can't find any seat belt parts. Can one even buy this sort of thing?

 

You have a good chance at the junk yards. I would go to a pull-a-part.

 

Be my luck, whatever I buy will not be the problem. If I get the cable, it will the motor or the other way around.

I remember you on my ethanol thread. I am just now getting back to my normal gas mileage. I measured 29.* the other day. That is pretty close to what I used to get. I hate ethanol. That crap cost me a lot of money and effort.

May see if I can unhook that cable and see if it turns like it should. It does sound funny tho. Reminds me of a speedometer cable that is bad.

Thanks for the info. Going to look up a junkyard. No local ones has a car like mine.

 

I just recall that I saw a Ford Festiva project where the guy replaced the automatic belts with manual 3 point belts. In the Festiva the mounting holes for the manual belts were all there.

The Protege has been sold all over the planet so maybe they put mounting holes for manual belts in place. If so the belts of the 323 might fit. In that case you could remove a bout 40 lbs of crap.


Do you remember the thread with the O2 sensor and the pipe from partsgeek?

 

If I go to manual after driving this car since 1994, I'd forget to put the thing on. lol

I think it is the cable. It doesn't go as far as it did before. I can hear noise where the cable is that sounds like something binding up. So, I got to find a cable, somewhere. This could get interesting.