Hello,

My 2008 galaxy we have somehow managed to break not 1, but two buckes in the back seats (left and right).

the first wasn’t such an issue but now with two it makes things really tricky with the kids and/or extra passengers.

it seams like such a pain to find suitable replacements and I suddenly had the idea - what about the two in the very back seats in the boot which we never use.

obviously they are not the same size from the arm connection things - but I am wondering if it is a good idea to open up the actual plastic housings and take them off and swap them on to the two broken ones…

the broken ones are basically just the actually plastic housings being smashed from being too rough sticking some heavy and oversized things in the back.

is this somehow feasible ? Am I being completely stupid? The actual plastic buckle units seem the same size.

there are plenty of articles on opening these plastic parts in various ways to take them apart, and it seams less of a big job than finding suitable replacements, taking the seats out, worrying about airbag cables, etc.

thanks for any advice 🙂

10 hours ago, Drzz said:

there are plenty of articles on opening these plastic parts in various ways to take them apart, and it seams less of a big job than finding suitable replacements...

In NI it would also be an MOT failure, though I'm not sure with you as the buckle still works, but has a broken plastic housing, so it may not be a failure? Personally, I wouldn't cannobolise  a further 2 x buckles on the car, but probably buy a couple on Ebay for 'replacement' purposes.

I'm sure someone sensible will be along soon...

Thanks for the reply, yes that’s the risk, if it doesn’t work out - but if it’s possible to hot swap them it would be a win as I haven’t used those seats 1 time in 5 years. I’m just not really 100% sure if it’s possible or safe.

maybe I’m not clever enough on my searching, but I can’t seem only find second hand full replacements on eBay. And from what I have read I would need to disconnect the battery and remove the whole seat and deal with the airbag connections.

i recently replaced the battery and that was a really pig of a job needing to remove the air filter unit..

yea the buckle main parts under the plastic enclosure seem pretty fit, it was just the plastic which smashed. I may or may not have put a huge block of concrete not so gently down on it. The other I think was my wife trying to ram one too many bikes in.

4 hours ago, Drzz said:

I haven’t used those seats 1 time in 5 years

UK law and MOT testing stations have to check that every seat has a fully working AND undamaged seat belt. Your car will fail it's next MOT with a "major" defect.

Seat belt conditions and checking has just been made more stringent in November 2024 so you can expect that examiners will be paying close attention.

You can buy silicone covers cheaply on Ebay or Amazon.  If you don't want a mechanical job then you could just tape the plastic back together and put a silicone cover over the whole thing.

As above, it won't pass MOT with a seatbelt that can't be buckled.  So you'd have to remove the rear belts if you did want to take the buckles from those seats.

Thanks for the replies. I wasn’t aware of the MOT strictness. I think they must have missed it as one has been broken for a few years, but we had an isofix car seat which didn’t need a seatbelt, so it was maybe hiding it.
That’s part of the problem as we need to convert that away from the 3 point straps and into the seatbelt version now. 
I’ll keep on searching for replacements and see if I can find a deal, but I’m still curious if it would work - and that’s (the last posts) an interesting point - if I remove the entire seatbelts from the 2 boot chairs if I remove the buckles hopefully that would solve that issue.

one more point and I’ll stop with the annoying questions - has anyone experience with replacing the entire buckle? Is it true I would need to disconnect the battery before removing the seat so as not to trigger the airbags?

16 minutes ago, Drzz said:

one more point and I’ll stop with the annoying questions - has anyone experience with replacing the entire buckle? Is it true I would need to disconnect the battery before removing the seat so as not to trigger the airbags?

Can you post some photos of the damaged buckle ?

It is always a wise precaution to disconnect the negative lead of the battery whenever carrying out work on the SRS.

One of the recent MOT updates on seat belts (fast forward to 1:03) 29th November 2024:

 

Is there an electrical connection to the rear buckle on a Galaxy?  If not then obviously there's no need to disconnect the battery.

Unplugging them won't set off the airbags, but in theory it could set off the pre-tensioner in the buckle, if one is fitted.  So far this has only happened to me once, and I'm still not sure whether I just missed the fault on the replacement buckle before fitting it anyway.  (Potentially came from a crashed car).

Just watched the video.  Only seems to apply to the actual belt, rather than the buckle?

Someone should probably have told them what 'fluffing' means before they wrote it into a piece of legislation. 

30 minutes ago, TomsFocus said:

Someone should probably have told them what 'fluffing' means before they wrote it into a piece of legislation. 

🤣 I don't think many people on here will know what a Fluffer is Tom🤣