Hey, guys, Adam here with americanmuscle.com.
Today we're taking a closer look at and installing the Corbeau Seat Belt Harness Bar available
for the '05 to '14 Mustang Coupe.
You should be checking this out if you're looking to properly mount and secure a three,
four, or five-point seatbelt harness to a bar from a reputable company like Corbeau.
Now, you can use, of course, your factory seat belt, and as you can see, we are retaining
them in the installation here.
But I will say, this is the absolute proper way to mount a regular harness bar that you
get from Corbeau, Recaro, so on and so forth.
As you can see, it's got a three-piece mounting sequence, we've got supporting rods on the
side, one on each side, and then the main horizontal bar at the top.
Now, the Corbeau logo you see in the middle there is a 3M Decal that's included in the
kit, obviously, optional.
We threw it on there.
I like the way it looks.
But for the bar here, it's a textured black powder-coated finish.
And again, some people do go out and get their's painted.
I personally like that textured black finish with our black leather interior.
I think it looks really nice, personal preference though.
And it also has a tubular steel construction which is very lightweight but also very, very
durable.
Now, I do wanna say that this is a good option for the guys who are not looking to spend
big bucks on a full roll cage for full race mode.
Now, with that said, you are saving money on the harness bar you see here, but it doesn't
act as a roll cage, so, in no way, shape, or form is this meant to support the chassis
in any incident of a rollover, so, keep that in mind moving forward.
If you're in it for the safety aspect, you wanna look into a full roll cage, but if you're
looking to just properly mount that harness, the harness bar is a more affordable way to
go, but also a proper way to go.
In addition to all that, this is gonna help stiffen up that chassis a little bit.
Now, again, it's not a full roll cage, doesn't offer that full support.
It does slightly stiffen up the chassis here so you might be able to take rolls a little
bit better around hard cornering, it'll keep everything nice and tight.
In addition to the supporting rods on the side, which are adjustable by the way, you
can adjust the height of these.
You get about a two-inch adjustment on top, two-inch adjustment on the bottom here on
both sides, so that's good to keep in mind.
In addition to the supporting rods, like I said, as well as the horizontal bar, you get
these retainer bars already welded to the top horizontal bar.
These are gonna retain that harness once it's looped through, so, those are already taken
care of, there is no cutting, there's no welding, or any modification like that, it is a direct
bolt-on.
This one comes in right around 300 bucks, which I personally think is a pretty good
deal for a harness bar like this.
It's got a really premium brand name behind it.
One thing I will say is that these are susceptible to getting dinged and scratched.
So, upon installation, just take really good care of when you're installing it.
You don't wanna get them scratched before you even get them in.
That powder coating is a light layer.
I'd say it looks good, but it is a very light and scratchable layer.
Now, guys, it's worth noting here that once you install a harness bar like this one, you
are losing the rear seats.
You could not safely put passengers on the rear seats, because if you did and there was
an accident on or off-road, they can be very, very seriously injured.
There's a bar right in front of their face, and if they were to move forward, that can
be very fatal and very, very dangerous.
So that's worth noting.
And, guys, this is a good time to do a rear seat delete kit.
When you install the harness bar, you can't put people in the rear seats, might as well
shave some weight, right?
There are rear seat delete kits on the site as well or you can leave them in, personal
preference.
Bolting it up is pretty simple.
You're gonna bolt it to the top factory seatbelt positioning as well as the bottom.
There are supporting rods and brackets as well as hardware included in the kit.
And one thing I will say is, depending on your model, you definitely wanna make sure
that you're bending knees if they need to be bent.
Now, ours didn't need to be bent a little bit in order to reach both sides, but really,
it's not that hard to tackle.
We'll say one out of three wrenches on our difficulty meter.
Anybody can tackle it in the driveway at home with very simple hand tools, and I'd say about
two hours from start to finish.
I'm gonna take you through the entire process here, so, what do you say we get started?
Tools used for this install include an impact gun, 3/8th ratchet, 14 and 18-millimeter deep
sockets, T50 Torx bit, needle nose pliers, and a flathead screwdriver.
First step, grab a flathead screwdriver.
We're gonna pry off the plastic cap at the top of our seatbelt, starting on our driver
side.
You're gonna stick it in there, pry back, pop that off.
Grab a 14-millimeter socket and your impact gun and remove that bolt underneath of that
cap.
Now, as you can see, on the backside of that bolt, there's a little spacer and a metal
washer holding it on.
You need to get that washer out of the way to get the spacer out.
Now, to do that, grab the needle nose pliers and hold on to one of the edges of that spacer
and you're gonna back the bolt out with your 14 socket.
There you go.
Set that aside and grab that spacer out because you'll need that.
Grab that spacer and set it right in the hole where that bolt used to sit.
At this point, guys, leave the seatbelt just as it is and you're gonna repeat this exact
process for the upper portion of the other side.
All right, so next up, grab the top portion of your harness bar and you're gonna basically
slide it in and we're gonna orient it on your factory bracket.
Now, for this little plastic and metal bracket piece, there is this guiding pin that goes
into that factory slot.
Now, because our harness bar does not have a cut slot, we're basically going to just
slide that bracket out and just use the plastic portion because, otherwise, there would be
no way for that to line up where it needs to go and it would prevent the actual bolting
up.
So we're gonna take that and install that onto the end here.
From here, we're gonna slide that into our bracket.
Make sure our bearing is on the opposite end.
All right, so here's the order you want things in.
You wanna make sure that the outside of your seatbelt is going to toward the rear of the
vehicle.
So that's what's going into your plastic trim panel here.
Now, with the harness bar in between that and the plastic trim on this side, that goes
onto the assembly.
From there, you wanna have that plastic piece that I just took apart, you saw that.
Then you're gonna have the harness bar and then the bearing.
We're gonna hold this into position and start threading it into that factory hole.
Once you have that, just line it up and start threading in that bolt.
You don't wanna tighten it down too much, just get it threaded in there to hold itself
in place but still leave room for adjustment.
At the end of it, this is what the assembly should look like.
Your seatbelt should be on the inside there, harness bar in the middle, factory seatbelt
coming over and easily removable just like this.
You should still be able to pull it freely.
That plastic support piece should be on this side, and then once you have that threaded
in, repeat for the other side.
So, now, at the top, you wanna make sure you've got both sides threaded in.
We've already repeated that for the other side, so you can see the top harness bar is
up there.
Don't tighten this down too much just yet, get it nice and hand-tight, maybe a couple
of clicks on your impact gun.
We're gonna start on the bottom now.
Now, for the bottom, we're gonna pop off the plastic cap, similar to what we did at the
top here, and then we're gonna use a T50 Torx bit to remove the T50 Torx bolt.
Now, for this, you just wanna push down and you can pry up and get that off.
So, this is attached to the seatbelt, so you just wanna leave that just loosen out of the
way.
Grab your impact gun and your T50 bit and remove that bolt.
Now, for this, you wanna remove that spacer again, as well as the washer.
Now, this is a little bit easier, you can sort of just twist it off by hand.
Pop that out and out of the way.
Pull the spacer off as well.
Now, at this point, you wanna grab the steel spacer included in the kit, this bracket here.
You're gonna put the bolt through the larger hole, not the one on the end, the one in the
middle.
On the back end, you're going to install that factory spacer and that retainer washer.
Now, that, you may have to thread on a little bit by hand to get it to seat all the way
back, just like this.
Now, that'll hold itself in place.
Now, this is going to install basically just like you see here.
We're gonna bolt this back up to the factory spot.
Now, on the end here, we're gonna bolt our supporting rod for the harness bar.
So the long bar that goes from the bottom to the top connecting both pieces is gonna
bolt here.
Now, next step, we're gonna take our supporting rod.
Make a little adjustment if you need to, you can extend the ends here, which we've done
here.
You get a jam nut collar, that way you can loosen or tighten that nut in order to make
those adjustments on both ends.
You can, you know, set it out exactly how it is out of the box and then see how much
you need to make the adjustments by.
So, the top, obviously, is gonna bolt this bracket here, but we're gonna worry about
the bottom first.
Now, for the bottom, I'm gonna prop this up there, basically going to be taking that bracket
that we just installed onto the T50, and bolting the end of this to the front side of that
bracket using the hardware included in the kit.
So we're basically gonna put this bolt and washer through the end, through that bracket.
And I need to thread it in there a couple of times.
On the opposite side, throw on a little washer and the nut there, from here, situate it in
a way that you can bolt the T50 down.
Get that T50 in there.
Just thread it in a couple by hand.
You don't wanna tighten that down too much just yet, you wanna be able to adjust the
bracket so you can adjust the height when you need to.
All right, now, for the top, you wanna take the hardware, again, the bolt, washer, lean
that up.
You can leave that room for adjustment so you can move the top of the bar.
From here, tighten it down from the outside going inward.
I like to thread this all the way down by hand.
We're gonna need a ratchet to get in here to tighten that up.
Now, as you can see, there's some room for adjustment.
Now, if you want this bar to be more forward like this, you can adjust the height of the
supporting rod.
Put it back a little bit more.
I'm going to install ours just about like this, but before I can tighten all this hardware
down, repeat this whole process for the bottom and the supporting rod on the other side.
Now, I know I said repeat for the other side.
I will say, this little plastic cover is different than the other side we just worked on.
It's the exact same process even though this looks a little different.
So, it looks like we need to make a little bit of an adjustment at the top.
Make that a little bit taller.
All right, with this side tightened down by hand, we can go back and tighten all of our
bolts down with our impact gun, but I think at the top here we'll need to use our ratchet.
We're gonna start at the bottom.
Now, this bolt down here is an 18-millimeter, so grab that socket and tighten it down.
This top bolt is also an 18-millimeter, so get that where you want it and tighten it
down.
Now, the last one is the top 14-millimeter.
Perfect.
Now, once you have that tightened down, and again, you don't wanna overdo it.
Grab that plastic cap, snap it right back into place.
Now we can repeat that for the other side.
Well, guys, that's gonna wrap up my review and install for the Corbeau Seat Belt Harness
Bar available for the '05 to '14 Coupe.
Now, if you're the owner of an S197 and you're looking to properly secure a three, four,
or five-point harness with a harness bar like this one without going full roll cage, this
is a great way to go, and you can pick yours up right here at americanmuscle.com.