[Bill Pritchard]

I've had 69 belts apart many times. More often than not, the plastic cover breaks, as it is a very tight fit over the metal base and the plastic is extremely brittle after 55 years. You can super-glue them back together and pray that they don't crack again when installing the new cover....that has worked for me.

EDIT: oops, I see now that you're working on the male end of the belt that's retractable, so forget what I said above. I did this on my former 69 Chevelle in order to repaint the retractor cover, and I think I did disassemble the retractor mechanism and remove the belt after removing the plastic cover from the metal base. What chevslakr mentioned above may work but I never tried it.