Just bought a 85 280SL Euro. The driver's side seat belt/shoulder harness stuck about half-way out and won't retract or extend. Any ideas?

My seat belt started acting up (wouldn't extend, although it did roll back) but I could fix it.

Here's what I did (on my '72 350SL, so not sure whether yours is the same, but hopefully): I followed the seat belt down to behind the seat to a little plastic box within which the belt is wound up. I took that out of the car, removed the plastic cover.

Now you can see the mechanism that locks the belt in place. It's a metal arm that goes into a cog. I used a smallish screwdriver to lift the locking arm up (while tugging a bit at the belt). This allowed me to unroll the belt all the way, so it can be cleaned up a bit. Then I just sprayed some oil at the moving parts of the spooling mechanism.

This fixed my seat belt.

Hot tip: Don't remove more than the cover of the seat belt spooling thingie, that is, don't take the mechanism apart, since there's a spring in there ... most likely you won't get it back in.

Hope this was somewhat understandable. I don't know what the proper terms are for the seat belt retractor thingamajig. ;-)

Cheers,

Mattis

Thanks for the reply...the retractor mechanism in my seat belt system is tucked behind some trim pieces that I am not going to tackle right now...but what you say has helped.