Remove softtop and retain seatbelt?

[james_ly]

From the googling I've done so far... when you take out the softtop, it's attached to a frame that the seatbelt mounts to?

My car has a hardtop and is mainly used on track - but I don't have a harness bar so need the stock seatbelts... so is there much weight saving from taking off the softtop? I'm not worried about damaging it because it was on it's last legs anyway...

[J03]

The soft top weighs more than the hard top believe it or not & the seatbelt mount points aren't integral to that frame, they're separate & retained after soft top removal 

All you'll need to do is attack where the soft top frame is hinged in the retained brackets with a grinder.

[J03]

EDIT... This should help  https://www.mr2roc.org/forum/index.php?topic=54916.msg658099#msg658099

[james_ly]

Cool thanks - might need to upgrade my dremel to an angle grinder! Can it be done in situ, or do you take the entire softtop off, grind off the brackets and bolt them back on the car? And are the brackets the ones the hardtop fitting kit is attached to?

[J03]

Cool thanks - might need to upgrade my dremel to an angle grinder! Can it be done in situ, or do you take the entire softtop off, grind off the brackets and bolt them back on the car? And are the brackets the ones the hardtop fitting kit is attached to?

Ah man, everyone needs an angle grinder! Best to whip it all out, oo errr & grind away in a relatively spark friendly environment.

Yes the hardtop brackets are attached to them.

[Kaveney]

This is really good info as I will be doing this in the new year as well but will look to use the Rogue hart top mounting kit .

Regards

[james_ly]

Wondering now if it's really worth the hassle... I haven't really noticed a performance decrease from the weight of the hardtop.

[m1tch]

I am running a hard top with OEM seatbelts, running just the softtop is the lighter option due to the hard top being heavier and the additional brackets, running the hard top however does mean the car is quieter, warmer and helps with body flex as it actually has a roof. Also, removing the softtop and rear bins frees up a lot more space in the back of the car, for me I swapped to just hard top only as my current soft top had started to fail and its parked outside so the hard top means its 100% watertight.