B00E3: Second Row Left Seat Belt Pretensioner C Deployment Control
What to do
Get this looked at promptly, and do not attempt it yourself. A restraint fault usually means the whole system has switched itself off, so the airbags and pretensioners may not fire in a crash — the car drives normally and is far less able to protect you. Never probe airbag wiring with a multimeter: the current an ordinary meter uses can set off the charge. Rear-seat belts usually have no airbag working alongside them, so their pretensioners matter more than most people assume.
What this code means
The deployment loop for the second row left seat belt pretensioner C is faulty.
A second or third pretensioner on one belt is not redundancy — each acts in a different place.
A retractor pretensioner winds slack back onto the reel. A buckle pretensioner pulls the buckle stalk down. An anchor pretensioner tightens the lap section at the floor. Together they remove slack from the whole belt rather than from one end of it, and the module fires them in a planned order.
Which is why losing one is treated as a fault rather than as reduced capability. A belt tightened at one end only pulls the occupant into a geometry the restraint system was not designed around — and on a rear seat, where there is no airbag to catch what the belt gets wrong, the belt is doing the whole job alone.
That last point is the one worth carrying about rear-seat restraints generally. Front occupants have belts and bags tuned together. Most rear occupants have the belt and nothing else, so its pretensioner and limiter are not a supplement to anything — they are the restraint.
Likely causes
Start here
- Corroded or loose connector · specialist
- Damaged wiring under the front seats · specialist
- Faulty seat belt pretensioner · specialist
- Open circuit in the airbag deployment loop · specialist
Less common
- Restraint device already deployed and not replaced · specialist
Symptoms
Components involved
Information, not instruction
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Have anything you intend to act on checked by a trained person against the manufacturer's own procedure for your vehicle. Nothing here replaces that procedure.
Community experience
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