Seat swap possibility

Just finished swapping in some front bucket seats to my son's '71 Valiant. Have no idea what they came out of, they were in the garage when I bought my house 25yrs ago ! AND THEN...........a customer dropped of his '04 Sebring convertible for some work while he was going out of town for a couple weeks. The pattern on his seats matched the Valiant's door panels perfectly ! They were NOT power ! The seat belts are also completely integrated into the seat. This would eliminate the messed up factory set-up ! Beef up the seat mounting area on the Valiant and good to go, right ?!! Then I thought about the belt retractors and looked up their operation, and .........trouble. They use a one time use only pyrotechnic device to retract belt in the event of a collision severe enough to set off airbags. Now, I can sit in car with belt on, and yank on belt and it will lock, like any other belt, but am concerned that these belts will not operate properly, in the event of a severe front end collision, without factory collision module interface. Maybe they would operate like a normal lock-up retractor, and just would not (obviously) have the rapid- retract feature that actually pulls you back into seat ? Anybody know for certain ?

I know on GM's they are fully extended till a collision then they retract with a explosion and have a ratchet to hold them back, so they should work fine as one without a retracter.

But, but, but what's the customer with the Sebring going to do for seats now?

First gen sebring convertibles (96-2000) use an inertia module located under the console to lock up the belts in case of impact or loss of battery voltage. Second gens (01-06) work like you describe and do integrate the old style lock up retractor in them as a backup incase there was a loss of power before impact. Other thing to keep in mind incase on your search you have trouble finding decent ones is the bottoms will swap side to side.

Why, use the seats the OP found in his garage.