Hello everyone,
Just a guest here who was looking into seatbelt fixes when i stumbled across this forum.
I have an '05 TJR, just bought a poison spider rollcage, to replace the OEM cage. When removing the seatbelts i let them over-retract, which caused them to lock the inertia lever in place refusing to extend the seatbelt. My passenger front, and both passenger rear seatbelts are similar to what is shown above but my driver's seatbelt was different. It did not have an easy to remove cover, instead it had 2 covers, both riveted on.
With nothing to lose, i brought the belt to work, ground off the Rivets on both covers (FYI, the dark grey cover with 3 rivets is the return spring and doesn't need to be removed, if you remove it I'll explain how i fixed it, later). Using a pocket screw driver i popped the inertia lever out of its lock and un-spooled my belt. Without a rivet of similar size on hand, i drilled the rivet holes out to 5/32, to fit an m4 bolt (3, m4x0.70x12mm for the spring cover, and 2, m4x0.70x16mm for the white cover).
To fix the spring concern, with the spring off, I retracted as much belt into the spool as possible, until it started contacting the framework, installed the spring, opened the inertia switch, and un-spooled the belt and tested the retraction. It appears to be working at this time.
I installed the m4's, with the bolt heads on the inside of the reel and the nuts on the outside (no washers, fyi). I also had to mildly alter the white cover to fit the nuts, but made sure not to put a hole in the cover. The bolt heads sit pretty flush with the reel mechanism. Also, make sure that you hold the seatbelt, pulled out, to keep spring tension and keep the interia switch happy.
I haven't installed the belt, yet, but indications show that it should be fine.
It's a little bit of work for saving a few bucks but maybe this will help someone, at some point.
-Matthew Kidder