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Update: Transport Canada has initiated an investigation and examined the car at the dealership. I haven’t heard from the investigator since I talked to him last week. The dealer has the car apart and are waiting on the seatbelt assembly. Talking to the service manager, he had nothing else to say about the car’s condition and couldn’t understand why it failed. While it’s a small dealer, they haven’t seen this happen before. The car has been rust protected since new, only has 70,000 km (about 43,000 miles). I haven’t been able to find anything suggesting that the NHTSA has an investigation going about this issue. But, I encourage everyone with an S550 to check the mounting point on your cars. You will have to pull the shield up. Honestly, this car hasn’t been subjected to extreme environments. The only moisture this should have been exposed to is from opening and closing the door on a wet day. Normal stuff.
Update: Transport Canada has initiated an investigation and examined the car at the dealership. I haven’t heard from the investigator since I talked to him last week. The dealer has the car apart and are waiting on the seatbelt assembly. Talking to the service manager, he had nothing else to say about the car’s condition and couldn’t understand why it failed. While it’s a small dealer, they haven’t seen this happen before. The car has been rust protected since new, only has 70,000 km (about 43,000 miles). I haven’t been able to find anything suggesting that the NHTSA has an investigation going about this issue. But, I encourage everyone with an S550 to check the mounting point on your cars. You will have to pull the shield up. Honestly, this car hasn’t been subjected to extreme environments. The only moisture this should have been exposed to is from opening and closing the door on a wet day. Normal stuff.
Don't know if this was ever solved?? That's pretty horrific & dangerous. I've seen some information (online, can't seem to remember where), on water ingress that may occur in some Mustangs, due to lack of body sealant in the A pillars. This may result in water entering the vehicle foot wells etc.
After 5 months, A Ford customer rep contacted me (saying they'd been trying to reach me for a while. Must have been telepathy they were using since I had no emails or missed calls) and they wanted to look at the car before authorizing repairs. I really wanted to make a snarky reply but just informed her that the repairs had been done 5 months before. They actually did still send a field engineer to look at the car. Several weeks later I got another message that they wanted to offer me a $100 e-voucher for my troubles but when it arrived, the fine print indicated that this was in exchange for a signed waiver of responsibility. I declined, indicating that I had still not been informed of how this happened (In my careers I have been in literally tens of thousands of cars of all ages and states of disrepair. I've never seen this kind of failure. About 4 days later I received an email asking for a copy of the work order so Ford could reimburse me. They authorized the dealership to refunded my credit card for the full amount of the repair. A retired Ford Service Manager I met believes this indicates a recall may be coming. I should mention that Ford uses this type of pre-tensioner on all their vehicles so, have any Ford owners you know pull back the sleeve over the cable at the base of the seatbelt and look for rust . BTW, the other 3 seat belts are showing no signs of rust.
Now if I can get something done about the water leaking onto the BCM......
The A pillar drip tends to take out the BCM (which also happened). The service advisor believes the seatbelt issue was just from normal amounts of water that it would be exposed to from rain, snow etc. I hadn't even shampooed the carpet. It just seems like this car was poorly assembled and had some sketchy parts.
10/25/23, 03:41 PM
This may well be the cause
