Not sure what happened but when I tried to leave for work today the driver's seat belt would not retract. It was fine last night when we ran some errands. The belt pulled out fine, but just would not retract - it sort of did if you hand feed it at the B-pillar slot, but only to a point. Knowing that I have to leave on a business trip soon and not wanting the hassle of dealing with the local dealership and their standard BS answer that there is 4-week wait for a service appointment simply because I did not purchase the truck from them, I decided to look into the matter myself. I pulled off the front and rear door seals and pulled the upper B-pillar trim off. I was able to determine than the tension restriction on the belt was at the upper belt anchor. I removed the nut and took a closer look at the upper pass through bracket and this is what I found.
![]()
The photo is of the front side of bracket but it is upside down in the photo. The hard black plastic over molded material had broken somehow and separated from the steel bracket and was pinching the belt on the top forward edging of the belt. The plastic is there in the upper position to both protect the top side of the belt from wear and abrasion on the edge of the steel bracket as well as to give some slight resistance or drag on to the retraction so that you can find a comfortable amount of belt slack when buckled in place, but still allow the belt to retract complete when unbuckled. My quick and dirty or "Primitive Pete" fix was to simply crack the plastic on the other side and removed the offending upper section of plastic from the bracket. This may not be the best long term solution, but it allowed me to at least drive the Durango with the seat belt snugly across my chest. The action of the belt and the inertia lock were not affected, although there is no longer any slack with the belt when buckled in place.
Just posting this encase anyone else may have a similar problem. In my judgement the plastic over mold is of a very hard durometer plastic, most likely nylon, valox or possibly delrin. It has a very high resistance to wear, but it is also very brittle. It may have over cured during the molding process or did not age well in the vehicle. Some plastic materials tend to continuously cure with age and thermo cycles which can eventually lead to the material cranking as it continually shrinks. This morning is the first cold Fall morning we have had locally, so it is my guess the failure was due to thermal cycle fatigue.
Please note that for liability issues, my educated guess at the cause as well as my quick and dirty fix are in no way meant to be implied as the actual failure mode analysis or the proper and best fix. Most likely the dealership would have replaced the complete belt assembly and sent the faulty unit in for material analysis by the vendor. As always YMMV.
The photo is of the front side of bracket but it is upside down in the photo. The hard black plastic over molded material had broken somehow and separated from the steel bracket and was pinching the belt on the top forward edging of the belt. The plastic is there in the upper position to both protect the top side of the belt from wear and abrasion on the edge of the steel bracket as well as to give some slight resistance or drag on to the retraction so that you can find a comfortable amount of belt slack when buckled in place, but still allow the belt to retract complete when unbuckled. My quick and dirty or "Primitive Pete" fix was to simply crack the plastic on the other side and removed the offending upper section of plastic from the bracket. This may not be the best long term solution, but it allowed me to at least drive the Durango with the seat belt snugly across my chest. The action of the belt and the inertia lock were not affected, although there is no longer any slack with the belt when buckled in place.
Just posting this encase anyone else may have a similar problem. In my judgement the plastic over mold is of a very hard durometer plastic, most likely nylon, valox or possibly delrin. It has a very high resistance to wear, but it is also very brittle. It may have over cured during the molding process or did not age well in the vehicle. Some plastic materials tend to continuously cure with age and thermo cycles which can eventually lead to the material cranking as it continually shrinks. This morning is the first cold Fall morning we have had locally, so it is my guess the failure was due to thermal cycle fatigue.
Please note that for liability issues, my educated guess at the cause as well as my quick and dirty fix are in no way meant to be implied as the actual failure mode analysis or the proper and best fix. Most likely the dealership would have replaced the complete belt assembly and sent the faulty unit in for material analysis by the vendor. As always YMMV.
