Exchanging UAS straps

No I am not doing this. But a poster on another forum has lost/misplaced hers and a few posters are saying they do indeed do this and don't understand why. I am not very good at explaining this and need help.

My response was that another UAS is not tested for that seat and might fail. I suggested to the OP that she could use the seat belt and now another poster has said yes the UAS are universal and that my explaination is "flawed" as "Not every seat belt is tested with every car seat." Are seat belts not "universally" the same? I certainly notice a difference in the UAS straps of my different seats but not so much from car to car. Just not sure of all my facts to post back. Sigh.

Many manufacturers will sell replacement UAS straps, and some manufacturers shipped out UAS straps to allow owners to add a UAS strap to seats that were made before UAS came in to effect.

The technical answer is that you shouldn't be pulling one UAS strap from another seat and using it with a different one, and that a seat missing the UAS strap is a seat missing parts and shouldn't be used if it's coming from another person. However, if the person is the original owner and purposefully removed the UAS (it's a common thing for people to do with the 3in1 seats because the re-threading of it for rf'ing installs was a pain and pigtail was barely long enough on some of the older seats seats,) then it wouldn't be horrible to use a UAS strap from the same manufacturer.

When it comes down to it, the UAS connectors have to withstand the same minimum force, and the webbing has to pass the same minimum abrasion and pull force standards, so what version of a UAS strap is used isn't a huge deal. I'm not talking about Radians because that's a different ball game, but for the rest? The bigger issue is *why* the UAS strap is missing from the seat. If that answer could be resolved to my satisfaction, then I don't think I could get worked up over it being a UAS strap that didn't come with the seat provided it was from the same manufacturer. And if it wasn't from the same manufacturer, I still don't know that I could get really worked up over it. :shrug-shoulders:

Thanks for that. I believe it is her own infant seat.

One of the people in the discussion swaps out her UAS straps from her seats(from different manufacturers) all the time since she doesn't like the connectors from some of the seats. I guess it never occurred to me to even do this.

And do you have any info on the forces that seat belts themselves can hold? I am assuming they have minimum forces they need to withstand with regards to forces.

Mingie said:

Thanks for that. I believe it is her own infant seat.

One of the people in the discussion swaps out her UAS straps from her seats(from different manufacturers) all the time since she doesn't like the connectors from some of the seats. I guess it never occurred to me to even do this.

And do you have any info on the forces that seat belts themselves can hold? I am assuming they have minimum forces they need to withstand with regards to forces.

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The amount of force a seat belt is designed to hold is regulated by CMVSS standards. I'd have to look up the number - I'm thinking it's CMVSS 208, but don't quote me on that.

I don't know the amount of force off the top of my head that the seatbelts are designed to hold. I know the number is going to be very high and if I was to speculate, I'd speculate that the buckle would be over-loaded with force before the webbing itself would break - but I honestly don't think it would be possible for it to fail with even a 400 or 500lb person in a survivable collision. The heavier the person the more force placed on the seatbelt system, the higher the speed of collision the more force placed on a seatbelt system. So for true failure to happen it would have to be a combination of both factors to overload a seatbelt system, and I honestly don't believe that's a probable event.

** Note I say true failure - by that I mean failure either in the webbing, the retractor, the point of attachment to the vehicle, or failure of the buckle. A buckle that was mistakenly not buckled all the way, or that is somehow otherwise manually disengaged wouldn't be failure of the seatbelt system. A seatbelt that has been damaged or otherwise altered by an operator of the vehicle again wouldn't be true failure. I've seen seatbelts that have been severely damaged by dogs to the point where I wouldn't use that seatbelt to restrain anything, let alone an adult. A seatbelt like that breaking though wouldn't be true failure any moreso than a bald tire blowing out would be the problem of the tire manufacturer.

Thank you very much. I tried looking the info up but came up empty.