I have also thought about using this spot for mine but this spot makes the extinguisher a significant missile if in an accident.:whoops: All it would take is for someone to pull out in front of you causing a rapid deceleration upon contact and the extinguisher is becomes lodged in the skull of an occupant.
IMHO - I think a good metal bracket for the extinguisher and being drilled through where the seatbelt mounts would be the most secure.
How do you figure? The seatbelt bolt keeps the panel from coming off, and the extinguisher bracket keeps the extinguisher from coming off.
In order for it to become a missile you'd have to havet he plastic panel break enough that it can come loose from the seatbelt bolt (at the minimum, far more if you have the seatbelt itself there). The force required to break the panel that much would be huge given that there's very little movement, and even with the extinguisher mounted on it there's not much weight. You'd pretty much have to break the entire panel in half, and plastic tends to bend/deform rather than snap clean off.
The fact that it's also held in place by the molding means it's supported in more than one area, and makes it even more difficult for that to happen.
Far more likely than the panel snapping in two is the bracket holding the extinguisher itself. However, they are designed to hold the extinguisher in place even with significant vibration/movement/force/etc against it. In my folks boat, the brackets for both extinguishers has held perfectly fine, and when you're going 55 mph across a lake with chop it can be about like a car accident every few seconds, knock a few teeth loose.
I've yanked on the extinguisher itself, put my whole body weight into it. If 200 lbs can't pull it loose (either the panel or the bracket), it would have to be one heck of an accident to pull it loose. Like maybe falling off a 300 foot cliff.......
I actually had it mounted when my truck was rear ended (hit and run). A gal hit my truck hard enough to move it sideways about 6", and probably would have gone farther had it not been for the curb that the tires were pressed (hard) against. She pretty much hit dead on that corner, which would have been force directed straight at the extinguisher, as close as you could get.
The extinguisher didn't come off, wasn't even loose. So I'm not worried in the least.