Patent ID: 7377463

Claim:
A seat belt retractor comprising a spool for carrying seat belt webbing rotatably mounted about a longitudinal axis and biased in a seat belt webbing rewinding direction, a toothed ratchet wheel mounted to rotate with the spool, a sensor for detecting an emergency condition, a vehicle acceleration sensor lever responsive to the sensor to engage the ratchet wheel in the event of an emergency condition, means for locking the spool against pay-out of seat belt webbing in response to the vehicle acceleration sensor lever engaging the ratchet wheel, the retractor having a means for switching between an emergency locking mode in which the spool is not locked and can rotate to pay-out and to rewind seat belt webbing and an automatic locking mode in which the spool is locked against pay-out of the seat belt webbing, wherein the switching means comprises a subassembly attached to a first end of said seat belt retractor, the subassembly having a housing and a plurality of annular axially adjacent disks mounted on a rotatable eccentric cam connected to said housing and having an axially directed spring biasing member to reduce axial spacing between said housing, eccentric cam and said plurality of annularly adjacent disks, the axially directed spring biasing member being an integral portion of one of said disks, and the plurality of axially adjacent disks comprising a gear having an axially projecting pin; a child hold out mechanism disk having a slot for accepting said projecting pin; and a blockout disk having an opening for accepting said pin.