Importance

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Abstract

A compact safety belt retractor is provided with a large coil of webbing on a rotatable reel and locking pawl teeth are able to have locking engagement with toothed wheels on the reel even when the coil of webbing has a larger diameter than the diameter of a circle defined by the teeth of the ratchet wheels. The coil of webbing preferably extends the full depth of the retractor from front edges of the sidewalls of the frame to the rear frame wall of the retractor. Thus, a large coil of webbing may be stored for the depth of the retractor. To reduce the side-to-side width of retractor, it is preferred to have reel ratchet wheels mounted in the plane of the frame sidewalls and to have the pawl teeth also mounted in openings in the sidewalls of the retractor frame. The pawl teeth are elongated columns and are loaded in columnar manner with substantially small shear or bending stresses thereon. At very high loading on the belt, as at the time of accident, the reel may deflect to shift the toothed wheels to directly engage the bearing surfaces on the sidewalls of the frame when the reel is locked. Both the locking pawls and the toothed wheels are substantially coplanar with the sidewalls of the frame and are disposed within openings in the sidewalls.

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First Claim