A while ago (more than a year) I got tire of fighting with
my 164's retracting seat belt (driver's side only) and the
fuzzy webbing kinda scared me so I replaced it with a slightly
faded 122 belt I had sitting around.

All was well and good until I found a 164 in a salvage yard.
It was a 70 with manual transmission. I harvested several
things off of it and will harvest more if it is still in the
yard when I get back from vacation. It has thus far donated
a crankshaft (george -- thanks for the offer but I already
had the motor mostly apart and I figured that the shipping on
the crank would be more than the $30 the yard wanted for it.
Besides I like salvage yards 'cause you get to spend time
outside with nobody pestering you *and* you don't have to put
anything back together).

I also got a pair of seatbelts. Unlike any other 140 I've
ever seen these belts aren't fuzzed out and the webbing looked
unfrayed and almost new. It was kinda stiff, though.

The car had filled up with water so I got some water in my
rachet. Otherwise the belts came out without drama.

The reels were gritty and the belts were filthy. I figured
that I didn't have anything to lose so I took the crappier one
(more rust on housing, grittier action in mechanism) apart.
There is a big spring in there that was kinda surprising when
it escaped... Otherwise I just washed the whole thing in my
bathroom sink with some dishwashing soap. The water came out
filthy for quite a while but it did eventually rinse clean. I
also used one of those detergent filled steel wool pads to scrub
the rust off of the chromed fittings. They polished up nicely.

When I got it out of the water I hosed the locking mechanism
out with some teflon bicicle chain oil I've had kicking around
for a while. I also sprayed the metal parts with the same stuff
after wiping them mostly dry. Then I pressed as much of the water
out as possible and used a hair drier to dry off the mechanism
(at least get it hot for 15 minutes) and also dry off the web.
I hosed the locking mechanism out with that bicycle chain stuff
and used the hair drier on it a couple more times, put the spring
back into the mechanism (make sure you've got it pointed in the
right direction...) and sprayed the spring with the oil, put
everything else back together and put it into my car.

A couple questions:

I didn't take pictures because I didn't have time. Would anyone
be interested in pictures + step by step descriptions ala haynes?

Will the oil screw up the webbing? I don't think it has much
solvent on it, but at the same time I did get some oil in exactly
where the most stress will be put on the webbing if I test out the
seat belts (on both ends oil definitly got onto the webbing, but not
much).

Yes -- there are places that will re-web seat belts. Even if
the reweb the belt the mechanism still needs to move freely and
I've never found an old volvo with smooth working belts. Later
volvos have a different locking mechanism that I think is more
robust so if I were to have a set rewebbed I'd probably have the
hardware from an early 140 put onto a web attached to a modern
reel mechanism.

chris