I’ve been doing a search, but came up with a few opposing answers to this. Looking for anyone who has personal experience with this.

I am looking for a CRX, however the USDM door mounted seatbelts drive me nuts. In Canada, all years came with Pillar mounted belts. As I live in California now, I wanted to see if a conversion was possible.

What I want to know is if it is possible to switch to the pillar mounts in the USDM 90-91 cars by purchasing 88-89 USDM or Canadian door panels and belt setups, or is this an impossible conversion?

The answers I have seen range from "Yeah no problem bolts right up" to "No, because the pillar wont support it" Anyone with personal experience, please help out! Pictures and lists of parts needed would be a big help too!

 

The last time I checked 88-89 USDM came pillar mounted. I may be wrong, but I observed this with several friends CRXs of varying years, all of which are real USDM vehicles (opposed to Canadian editions, or JDM) with OEM parts of various models (Si, HF). The common factor was the years and seat belf placements, 88-89 were pillar mounted and 90-91 were door mounted. From my understanding the 90-91 can NOT be converted to pillar mount as the mounts are not even there and would require somewhat serious modification to have them installed after the fact. The pillar mounts, having never been installed during manufacture, are similar to the USDM CRXs not having seat belt mounts in the back even though the JDMs came with seats and seatbelts. The 88-89 can be converted to door mounted as it is self contained and uses the same latch mechanism, just disregard the mounts on the pillar and use 90-91 doors.

If you are seriously concerned with getting the best bang for your buck, get an 89 UDSM CRX and go from there.

 

its the 88 that has the pillar mounted to my knowledge the 89 has the door mounted.


the 89-91's do not have the nut to mount the seat belt to on the b pillarm but the hole is there to mount a nut.

the internal mounting for the seat belt seems to be there..

 

I stand corrected

 

I have been thinking about doin the conversion..and having that nut welded in..

 

Makes me happy I run an 88. I would have ripped out that door mounted belt by now.

 

My car is an '89 hf and seatbelts are pillarmounted.

 

all '88s are pillar mounted, and the 89 hf is pillar mounted. 89 si and dx are door mounted, and 90-91 si, dx and hf are door mounted.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by MatHadder &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">all '88s are pillar mounted, and the 89 hf is pillar mounted. 89 si and dx are door mounted, and 90-91 si, dx and hf are door mounted.</TD></TR></TABLE>

yup...and if i keep my current crx ill will be doing the door conversion as well...everything is there for the install, except the nut that has to be welded to the pillar...there is even a circle to be punched out on the window panel trim as well for the seatbelt bolt...

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by MatHadder &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">all '88s are pillar mounted, and the 89 hf is pillar mounted. 89 si and dx are door mounted, and 90-91 si, dx and hf are door mounted.</TD></TR></TABLE>
Read my mind

 

So it can be done then? No issues?

Has anyone atempted this on the board yet, and what issues did they have?

I would just go find an 88 Si, but I cant find one. I have found a 90 Si for sale here on the board. But as we all know, finding a stock CRX Si can be hard to do. If anyone has a CRX for sale in Cali, let me know as well.

But back to the topic, anyone with any experience or pics on this swap want to chime in? Thanks for the answers so far guys, looks like it will be possible!

 

I have some first hand experience doing the pillar mount seat belt conversion on my car. I ended up taking everything out of my 88 shell and transferring it to a 90 shell including seat belts, doors, seats, and suspension from '88. This is not an easy task and requires a lot of modification as I found out. It is a lot more than just adding the nuts in the b pillars. I'll see what I can do about making a diagram because this will be difficult to explain.

 

Ok I just stole this from the workshop manual and modified it a bit but this should help to visualize everything.

Looking at the diagram above:
89+ shells have the mounts for the belt retractor.

89+ shells also have holes for the upper anchor bolt mount but no nut inside to screw it to. There might be a better way to add a nut but what I did was weld a nut onto a piece of sheet metal and slid it up to the hole. However you can't just slide it up there because the top seatbelt/door catch on the 89+ door mounted cars have their own odd shaped nut/hardware to hold them in place which has to be taken out in order to fit a nut up in there. You will have holes in your door jam after you remove the catch(is this the correct name?)....body work can fix that

89+ Shells have a nut for the lower anchor bolt on the passenger side only, on the drivers side you must add one somehow, what I did was put a nut on a piece of sheet metal, drilled a hole in the floor, and mounted it to the underside of the car on the floor.

I believe that is it unless you go to seats with 88 seat rails which I did and that is even more fun

 

have a hatch, and every time i get in the car i want to rip them out of the doors, i have thinking of doing this for about a year now i am so facking lazy(poor haha). i dont even now if it is possible for my car because i think all hatchs and 4door came with the belts in the doors and the crx door and the civic door are different, so i can not use that door so i would have to fab something up, i was also thinking of taking the seat belt totally out of the door and shave that ugly thing in the top of the door and just put in some 4 points idk.
I dont think this helped anything

 

tnx for the visual

 

yea thats looks good, but i've picked up a wrecked crx for parts and he had done this pillar mounted seatbelt conversion because he replaced the door due to an accident NOT knowing that 88's have the pillar mounted seat belts...so he did the same you want to:

welded the nut in there and the whole assembly rite underneath in that cavity, looked flawless..... but like i said before the car got in a wreck...and the bolt broke loose and the seatbelt "conversion" wasnt functional anymore....

so take in consideration the safety issue also, i'm sure you could make that bolt bulletproof welded on there and it could survive a bomb ... but just thought i'd mentione something since i've seen that conversion and now theres a reason i own that car

p.s. the driver was ok, he did hit the steering wheel and was hospitalized for a week or so.

 

I have an '88 CRX Si. Pillar Mounted.
I have an '89 CRX DX. Door Mouunted.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by MatHadder &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">all '88s are pillar mounted, and the 89 hf is pillar mounted. 89 si and dx are door mounted, and 90-91 si, dx and hf are door mounted.</TD></TR></TABLE>

wrongo, i have an 89 dx hatch with pillar mounted seat belts

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Slomo_civic &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">wrongo, i have an 89 dx hatch with pillar mounted seat belts</TD></TR></TABLE>

when was your crx made?

check the born on date

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Outsane &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">

when was your crx made?

check the born on date</TD></TR></TABLE>

Yeah, it could be "overyear" car, witch wasnt registered until ´89.