Breed Automotive Technology, Inc.

Frederic Jallot

John Bell

Paul Slack

Michael Thwaites

A seat belt retractor has a housing and a spool in the housing. A toothed ratchet wheel is coupled to the spool. A locking assembly has a lock bar pivotally mounted to the housing and moveable by means of a camming arrangement from an initial position clear of the ratchet wheel to a position whereby the lock bar locks the ratchet wheel to the housing. An adjustment mechanism enables adjustment of the initial position of the lock bar.

Seat belt retractor

A seat belt retractor has a lock cup mounted for pivotal or rotational movement in relation to a bush mechanism over a predetermined arc of a circle. The arc subtends an active working section of less than 360&deg;. A wedge extends into the gap between the lock cup and the bush mechanism to reduce the gap when the retractor is at rest. Preferably a wedge extends from both the lock cup and the bush mechanism. Such an arrangement reduces the slack between the lock cup and bush mechanism without jamming the mechanism.

A rear seat vehicle seat belt buckle arrangement includes a buckle head and webbing for attaching the buckle head to a load bearing part of the vehicle. The webbing is fixed to at least two spaced apart attachment locations connected to the load bearing part of the vehicle. The webbing may be a single piece of webbing looped through a slot in the buckle head or two separate lengths of webbing and it may be attached to opposite or to spaced apart rings mounted to a mounting bracket bolted to a fixed part of the vehicle (e.g. a floor plate). The fixing bolt preferably passes between the two splayed parts of the webbing to retain the splayed form. This provides more comfort to the passenger and more flexibility whilst optimizing the safety of the restraint by restricting forward movement of the passenger in a crash and applying crash leads appropriately.

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London, United Kingdom

Frederic Jallot