1963 mystery seat belt tag

[Justin W.]

I've found the information on what the Irving Air Chute tag on my 1963 seat belts SHOULD be. The problem is, my tags (all 4) don't follow protocol. I have an early-ish '63 assembled the second week of February. Can anyone identify why the last two lines of codes differ from what the traditional codes are? Could this be a case of early cars having different numbers? The other curious detail is that the buckles have the larger (later version) IC 5000 stamping. The tag shows: (LINE 1) IRVING AIR CHUTE (LINE 2) LEXINGTON, KENTUCKY (LINE 3) MODEL ID - 51 - 198 - 1 (LINE 4) CAA SPEC TSO - CC - 22S (LINE 5) SAE STD SBA - 4

[John T.]

Re: 1963 mystery seat belt tag

This tag would be expected in late 1961 or early 1962.

Hope this helps.

John

[Harry S.]

Re: 1963 mystery seat belt tag

Can you post pictures of the labels, buckles and webbing?

[Justin W.]

Re: 1963 mystery seat belt tag

Thank you. Here are a couple photos of the labels and webbing.Seat belt tag.jpgIMG_8584.jpg

[Bob R.]

Re: 1963 mystery seat belt tag

They are different then the old tag on my 63. The stitching is different too. Mine have white stitching on the face of the tag and the belt color on the bottom side only. I don't think those tags were originally installed on those belts. I had a little difficulty loading pictures. The tan belts are from my files but not my car they are original 63 belts. I couldn't get mine to load as they are not JPEG files.
63 seatbelts.jpg

[Harry S.]

Re: 1963 mystery seat belt tag

Bob, those are my belts from my April 63 before I restored them.

I agree with you, someone played with his belts.

[Justin W.]

Re: 1963 mystery seat belt tag

Thank you gentlemen. This is strange. Did Irving supply the three banded belts to other car manufacturers? Would someone have taken seatbelts from another vehicle, put the correct hardware on them but not the correct labels?? If only these cars could talk!

[Justin W.]

Re: 1963 mystery seat belt tag

With more digging I believe the labels on my seat belts are the 1958-62early Corvette version. I'll double check the stitching on the labels and at the buckles to see if they were re-stitched.

[Tracy C.]

Re: 1963 mystery seat belt tag

Thank you gentlemen. This is strange. Did Irving supply the three banded belts to other car manufacturers? Would someone have taken seatbelts from another vehicle, put the correct hardware on them but not the correct labels?? If only these cars could talk!

To answer your question, yes this 3 band material was used in many different GM cars in 62 & 63. The webbing was also sold by Irving to aftermartket companies who manufactured & sold belts under their own labels.

In your case, I agree with the consensus here that someone cobbled together a set of belts and used a set of tags they had removed from a set of donor belts. The good news is that Paragon sells a repop tag that is dead nuts correct for your early Corvette application.

tc