1991 Camry seat belts won't buckle

[nick5446]

I'm posting this question on behalf of my little sister and father who are about 3,000 miles away from me, so I apologize if I don't have all of the details.

My sister bought a '91 Camry which seems to run great. The one problem it has is that none of the seat belt buckles work. My dad did some research and found it is a pretty common problem, stemming from them being magnetized (or de-magnetized?). Apparently, when he removes them from the car they work fine, but in the car, not so much. Furthermore, when he went to the junkyard to grab some new buckles, he checked 8-10 Camrys and they all had the same issue.

My question is, if this is such a common problem, someone must have found a solution by now, right?

I apologize if this has already been discussed, but I did a quick search and didn't find anything.

Thanks for any and all help!

[white90dx]

I have NEVER heard of the seat belt buckles not working on a gen2 Camry. I've been around the forums for almost 10 years now...

Are you sure he wasn't talking about the inertial seat belt lock mechanism or something else?

-Charlie

[nick5446]

I was surprised to hear about this too, I would imagine if it really was as common as it seems then everyone with a Camry would know about it.

Is there anything that could have set this off? Some weird electro-magnetic interference from something else in the car?

[nick5446]

BTT

No one else has heard of this?

[atobe]

nope... can you explain more ?? .. may be the spring that puts the latch back into position is broken or out of place ?? I've also never heard of this problem mentioned in this forum before

[csaxon]

Are they the automatic seat belts that Toyota used to use?