Stuck Seat Belt

[The Shermanator]

My drivers side seat belt will not unlock itself. When I go to buckle up my seat belt, it will not release from the emergency lock position. I have to jerk my seat belt 30 times, one inch at a time to be able to buckle it. The belt retracts just fine, it just won't let me buckle in easily.
Anyone have any experience taking apart and repairing a seat belt? Any pics would be helpful too!

 

[SNAKEYE]

Not with the belt in my Cobra, but with a belt in a '78 Corvette. There was a recoil spring that has like a reduction gear assembly within that meshes with a gear driven by the central axle of the belt takeup spool. The hole in the metal frame where the central axle protruded into the spring/gear assembly had worn into a slight oval allowing the gear to pull away from the reduction gears which allowed the ratchet to slip and get the mechanism out of timing with the spool. I had to pry the plastic cover off of the recoil spring assembly and manually rotate the the assembly around to get things back into proper sequence, then put the plastic cover back on and melted the stubs of the plastic rivets with the head of a nail heated a bit with my soldering torch. Eventually the recoil assembly may once again work its way back around to not working. To prelong the return of the problem I advised the owner to initially pull the belt out much more than required to insure being able to reach the buckle on the first pull without the engaging the ratchet. As the car is driven very little it should work well for years. And if it starts acting up again it can be taken apart and put back in sequence.

 

[Finaltheorem47]

There is a little plumb weight on the seatbelt, and if its on an angle, it will lock. It's designed so that when there is a large lateral G force on the car (aka stopping hard) the plumb will swing thus locking the mechanism.

I dunno if that helped you at all but I figured it doesn't hurt. Anyways your problem is probably related to the plumb.