Seat belt with plastic cover

Claim 1

In a safety belt buckle, the combination comprising: a generally channel shaped frame having a bottom wall and a pair upstanding side walls, a tongue plate slideable along the bottom wall of the frame, latch means mounted in the frame for movement between a latched position for holding the tongue plate against removal and an unlatched position allowing removal of the tongue plate from the frame, a push button operator for shifting the latching means from the latched position to the unlatched position, a bottom plastic cover for the covering the bottom wall of the channel shaped frame and having sidewalls for upwardly along the upstanding side walls of the frame, and a one-piece plastic top cover having a shell for covering the upper open side of the channel shaped frame and having an opening exposing the pushbutton operator for operation by a user, a plurality of side ribs on each side of the top over depending internally from the shell for engaging the side walls of the channel shaped frame and for supporting the cover shell thereabove, said bottom cover and said top cover abutting each other adjacent the frame side walls, a rear support having ribs depending internally at the rear of the shell for positioning to abut the frame bottom wall, a back wall on the shell extending to abut the bottom wall of the frame at the rearward side of the buckle, and a front support having a plurality of ribs depending internally from the shell and positioned over the tongue plate and spaced therefrom by a predetermined distance less than the distance the shell will be deflected under heavy loading so that the ribs engage the tongue plate which engages the frame bottom wall and thereby supports the front portion of the shell when deflected, said ribs being spaced with openings therebetween to reduce cross sectional thickness and to decrease mold cycling time and the distortion of the plastic during cooling.