I decided to have a little fun and post a somewhat challenging project involving my Honda Odyssey. Ok, mine doesn’t look as nice as this one, and I don’t look nearly as cool as Mr. Clooney near mine, but that’s beside the point.
The Problem
My 2006 Honda Odysssey doesn’t have the hardware to support a seatbelt for the 2nd row middle seat as supporting a middle seat would evidently exceed the Gross Vehicle Weight of the vehicle, assuming there were eight 150 pound passengers, due to the already increased weight of the vehicle due to the Navigation and other features. Or something like that. However, the middle seat does fit nicely in, just with no seatbelt.
The Solution
Hire some VAs to explore possible solutions to installing a seatbelt, providing links and other resources required to have said seatbelt installed.
The Job Post
The Instructions
The VAs
Found an Electrical Engineer from Italy for $11 (fixed price), and another VA who worked as a customer support for Wells Fargo for $2.22 (fixed price). Both of these rates were quite low for their level of skill, due to the fact they are starting off and trying to get some experience.
The Results
In addition to a diagram and links to various posts explaining the solutions people found was an excellent summary by Faith on the various solutions out there and the cost and complexity. Through this research, I found out it would cost $120 in parts plus 8+ hours of labor by someone with experience removing the Honda’s headliner, or alternately I could buy a lap belt for $30 and bolt it to the seat, floor by an experienced welder. Without this information, I could have spent $120 on the parts I thought would work, only to be hit by an additional $400 bill for installation, when there was a much simpler solution for under $75.
In the end, the $14 spent on the two VAs for this project saved me a lot of time, potentially money, and also gave me two excellent contacts for future projects.
