I knew that LASAR carried a kit that contained new lap belts, since the original equipment didn't come with the studs for shoulder harness attachment, and that the kit went for $175 per side. The same thing from Mooney cost $300 per side. The only issue was whether 1DD had bolt-on or clip-on style lap belt attachments (where the belts attach to the seats). When I first took a look, it appeared that they were the bolt-on style, since there was a bolt with a screw head and a nut on the inside of the seat. LASAR claimed to have a few clip-on style kits in stock, but the bolt-on kits were going take four to six weeks to be in stock, let alone delivered.
I started asking around, and I scoured the Mooney mailing list archives. I found out that some people order the hardware from LASAR or Mooney and then have the belts custom-made by Belt Makers (in Torrance, CA). That's apparently what was done on AOPA's Millennium Mooney. Anyway, I called Belt Makers directly and got pretty confused when they started talking about the various FAA TSOs...C114, C22, etc. They didn't know a Mooney from a Maule, so I decided I didn't want to mess around with the custom-made route. I wanted something tried-and-true, and most of all, legal. At that point, I called ModWorks, Coy Jacob's Mooney Mart, and even Mooney directly. Everybody pointed their finger at LASAR and said that they were the cheapest and most available way to go. Still, they had no bolt-on kits in stock.
After almost caving in and buying the expensive ones from Mooney, I decided to take yet another look at the belt attachments on 1DD. Man, did I feel stupid when I looked closely and saw the clip... So, I ordered the clip-ons from LASAR and here they are. Clearly depicted below is the clip-on mechanism.
Here's the thing, though...the LASAR kits seem to be produced entirely by a company called AM-Safe. I wouldn't be surprised if they can produce the belts and hardware for you even less expensively than LASAR. Below, the patch sewn onto the belts is pictured:
The LASAR kit did come with genuine Mooney parts for mounting the shoulder harnesses to the steel fuselage cage, but these parts are obviously available directly from Mooney. I also scanned in the diagram that came with the LASAR kit (incredibly crude in my opinion) for reference, in case anybody out there wants to get the parts directly from AM-Safe and install them yourself.
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