Seat belt locked

Welp, after 18 years, my rear seat belt is locked up. Done some youtube research and done most, to no avail.
For context, my kid has Autism and rocks constantly. I've heard it lock before and I would release it and reset it and it will be fine. Now its locked up. It will release every 20th or so try.

Short of pulling it out and drilling out the lock mechanism, which I don't want to do since he is clueless of the world.
I have 3 options,
Junkyard, will probably be on borrowed time.
Rebuild which is about $80+$25 their shipping + my shipping and taxes
New from stealership is about $160 +tax and $5 dollar shipping.

May swap in my SC's rear seat belt since its the same color tone in the mean time.

 

Have you tried heavily lubing the mechanism?

 

Rear seats gotta come out to access the belt right?

 

I'm honestly not sure, but most likely at a minimum need to move the back. never really looked since I have carseats there since day 1 lol. I don't even know if the rear seats fold down lol.

 

They do on an 07, they do not on a 21.

 

Damn iy Jim.. well, I'll be doing it this weekend.

 

Welp, I may have found the problem... got home from and decided to tackle this.. good news, I unbolted the rear seats, honestly I probably don't need to. I managed to get some WD40 and after some work it came loose, then got caught again. Problem is not the locking mechanism... it's all frayed, probably tangled in the inner workings. I ordered a new one along with a thermostat for my SC.

 

Oh damn that things shredded

 

Don't let the rug rats and pets teethe on your seat belts!

 

Lmao.. I wish it was rats.

 

Ok, seatbelt has been successfully replaced
Seats don't gotta come out. You will lose some clips though.
Will need a pick, a deep 10mm a shallow 12 and 14mm sockets or a gear wrench may help, definitely a long 10mm with 3in extension.


That SRS tab, gotta come out, pull from the window side of the tab. Use that 10mm with extension to pull that bad boy out. After that drop them into the center console so it doesn't grow feet and dip.



It's pretty straight forward, except for the buckle and the top exit point that have to slide put with the thickest part towards the rear and tabs towards the door.
14 bottom and 12mm top on this bad boy



14mm for this one too



I didn't take a picture of the removal, but that bottom thick portion gets pointer towards the window and drops out. There is a riveted plastic tab that I didn't want to mess with so I slid this bad boy down as well as the buckle. New one goes in the same way.


Here is the old one... only change is the black button vs tan.