I have an 01 f150 that the bags deployed in. The seatbelts no longer will retract. Any connection between the two?
I swerved to avoid hitting a child on a bike at 10mph and tapped a lightpole. Dented the front bumper near the frame stub and poof. There they went!

 

Yes there is a connection, the pyros in the seat belts fired and locked them into place. Time to replace them with the airbag(s).

The airbags should not have deployed at 10MPH, the system does not arm until 23.5 MPH.

 

That is some very good info to know. When i bought my truck my front bumper had a small dent in it where the chrome is. But it had actually bent the passenger side bumper bracket quite a bit i would say about 10 degrees so from 90 to 80. And it took a substantial amount of force to bend it back. I tried everything to bend it back except a torch because i don't have one. Ended up using my truck and a chain hooked up to a big tree and a 10lb sludge hammer. a few yanks and wacks later it straitened out. Iv been wondering what it takes to set the air bags off and now i know. I just never worried about it enough to start a thread.

 

Where did you learn that? I've never heard of Ford, Land Rover, Saab, Mitsubishi, or any other mfr. using a minium speed to enable the SRS. If you're stopped at a light, and someone slams into you, you'll need the airbags to work. Some car commercials even show that happening, and the airbags deploy. I can't find any mention of a minimum speed on the Ford service disks, either.

 

i dont think pre 04 has pretensioners on the seatbelts, or any squibs on the seatbelt ratchet.

I think the seat belt ratchet is just mechanically locked and stuck that way

 

For one thing, you have the word of the OP that it was 10 MPH. I wasn't there so there's no way I could know either way, but 10 MPH is awfully slow, and on the other hand, inertia to cause deployment involving an immovable object compared to a movable object is QUITE a bit different.
Having worked on multitudes of cars with deployed airbags (especially law enforcement) I can say that Fords DID deploy sometimes MUCH easier than GM (Chevrolet). Often you couldn't figure why they deployed (felt they shouldn't have) and other times you couldn't figure why they didn't deploy (felt they should have).
My boss pulled out in front of a car that didn't have a stop one morning with the sun in his eyes, in a new CV that hadn't been put into service yet, and the air bags both deployed. The entire damage to the front end was a side ways swipe on the front bumper and reinforcement. It was substantial enough to swing the frame rails sideways about an inch. There probably wasn't more than 5 MPH forward speed on his part because he had only moved about 10-12 ft. when he was hit. Inertia IS the key, and air bag systems normally work quite well, but it's not always easy to equate what you see in damage with the science of why the AB deployed, or didn't.

 

Try to get these in order, remember this is for a 2001 Ford F-150, in 1999 / 2000 the 2 front impact sensors went away, and everything is VSS and gyro in the RCM for deceleration for 00-03 ( don't have cell 46 for a 1999 MY handy, could be more 97/98 like or more like the 00-03, the 99 was a work in progress truck ).

Trying to find this in the 2003 service manual, should be 501-20. Once I get the page for it ( might have to go back to 2001 CD to find this ) I'll post the page number. Just went over this not too long ago. This is pre front impact severity sensors in the 04+ MY F-150.
The minimum speed is so the airbags are not deploying when the car is standing still or in a parking lot bumping a light standard.
Not sure why you would airbags to deploy when you are standing still ??? Never seen a Ford F-150 commercials with that in it, nor any other mfgr car for that matter.

2001 EVTM cell 46, RCM inputs :
pins 18 & 22 : Driver's side electronic pretensioner connections.
pins 15 & 16 : Passenger's side electronic pretensioner connections.
There is a note, I do not have in PDF, on For pretensioner retractor disposal information, refer to Section 501-20B. I need to re-read this as I thought this where I got the idea from about the pyro loads, they are not just to be tossed in the trash can.
The SRS system uses the same labels for the seat belt on the 04+ MY, so by the name the 99-03 and 04+ MY are the same in terms of the seat belt pretensioner

I cannot comment on how the CV is done, I have not looked at CV info in great detail. I do know a same ( close ) MY CV to F-150 are nothing alike. They can have greater disparity than the F-150 to EXPY in the same MY, and using information from a CV to talk in terms of a F-150 is a bad idea.

I am aware of the deceleration part of the equation, was not part of my question, as clipping a pole had some kind of deceleration, so that part of the equation was already filled.

 

Well i know for a fact my 03 doesnt have a pyro in the seatbelt female (normally called pretensioner) since its just steel foot and webbing going up to the female end, with a hard plastic coating to keep it help up off the floor.

I dont believe there is anything in the ratchet side, i know ive had the trim off before, but cant remember for sure if there was anything there. That being said my truck has been in two wrecks and the seatbelt ratchet still works just fine, and no airbags were deployed.

I believe the only "seatbelt wiring" there is on the 97-03 is just the wiring that indicates if the seatbelt is in use or not.

 

The [seatbelt is in use or not] is on the buckle side, on the 00-03 is not connected to the RCM that is a warning chime, cell 66, connected to the GEM.
The pretensioner is on the seat belt retractor side connected to the RCM, cell 46. Read your service manual, page 501-20A-2 :

There is a division line between the SIR belts and non SIR belts, so if you have non SIR belts, you do not have the pyro load, but you will have the pretensioners connector.
If you read the removal and install section, both describe the pretensioner connector ( pictures included in that section ). Shows the SCrew with the b-pillar disassembled and the connector to the RCM. Also no note in cell 46 about SIR and non SIR seats with the pins noted above.

EDIT :

Just found the Sub wreck, and that was a standing still wreck, so the SRS was not armed ( no speed and no deceleration ).
The E-150 wreck, no mention of the speed. It was fast enough to pop the fuel inertia switch, but I have seen posts from members where pulling into a parking lot with a less than smooth transition.

I know when I T-boned the F-350 that made a left turn in front of me on 24-DEC-05 my fuel inertia switch did not pop, but the SD's did.

 

10mph was a rough guessteimate. It did have enough inertia to bent the right side towhook down and hit the framerail centered perfectly, that was tweaked but not enough to knock it out of alignment to re-install a new bumber.
I guess I will pull the drivers side belt and see what the "Hang-up" is, but Im not real sure what to look for.

 

Imagine this: you stop at a stop sign, but the guy coming at you doesn't. The car coming thru from your L hits him, and he nails you dead-on. You'll want the airbags, even though your VSS shows 0mph. Bottom line: the airbags are for your speed relative to your own vehicle; not its speed relative to the ground. So any impact at any ground speed can result in you hitting your steering wheel (or door or B-pillar) hard enough for injury.

I'm not saying Ford didn't put in a minimum speed - I'm just saying it wouldn't make sense to me if they did, and I've never run across it in any documentation, or even when I blew both bags in my '99 CV, well below 20 mph.

The commercial that springs to mind is for insurance; a car (possibly an Impala) is stopped, and gets rear-ended by a pickup in slow-mo. The airbag blows, and the car is shown crumpling like an inchworm & then straightening out as the voiceover describes how fast this insurance company will fix your car. I know I've seen others, but I can't remember them in any detail right now.That's something I have read, in all mfrs' service manuals: never toss explosives in the garbage. Ford publishes specific instructions on how to detonate airbags & pretensioners, and I've blown many! At the LR dealership, DiscoveryII pretensioners went bad so frequently that we'd have a mini-war in the shop every few months.

Meanwhile, back ON-topic... Look for lint, trash, or coins tangled in the belt, or the trim panels warping & pinching the belt, or the sound deadening sagging & pressing the belt against the trim or body, or twist in the webbing, causing the spool to roll up thicker than it should. Spool the belt ALLLLLL the way out and look down into the reel housing for any debris. If necessary, remove the reel from the B-pillar & dump it.

 

Scully- I'm aware there's no similarity between a CV and an F-150 but isn't there the same need to protect the occupant in an accident? I would assume the air bag system would be designed to provide similar protection. We only had a few F-150's and a # of Expeditions and some Excursions in the fleet but a ton of CV's. As Steve83 said, the CV's seemed to pop pretty easy, and in my own experience, much too easy. One from hitting a pole in a parking lot at about 5 MPH with only damage to the front bumper. From what I remember, a while back they had a story on the news about the bad guys in L.A., wanting to get away, would hit the patrol car in the front hard enough to pop the AB so that he would be out of commission. That's with the patrol basically standing still. I do remember a chase in the L.A. area about 2 or 3 years ago on live TV, of a bus that had been stolen. Pretty hard to PIT a full size commercial bus so when the guy went down a dead end residential street and up on a yard, they pulled up about 10 ft. behind him to block 'im in. The patrol car was stopped when the jerk in the bus reversed and backed into the patrol car and you could see the AB pop on live TV.

 

I am only commenting on how the system works and is installed, no opinion added.

Look at Pat's wrecks, no airbag deploy on either, where if he had a 97/98 MY, they would have most likely went off.

I can not even comment if the DOT requirement / testing requires a truck to have similar protection as a car.
Cars have crumple zone, don't know if this is even DOT requirement, but it pushed as a safety feature. Trucks not so much in the crumple zone.

This is hitting a SuperDuty pulling a left turn in front of me from my right at ~ 25 to 35 MPH ( the bumper mark is his front driver's side wheel ).



Both airbags went off ( I was going fast enough, and came to an abrupt stop ) and both seat belts locked in place. Both airbags and both Pretensioners replaced as part of the repair.
Oddly enough the fuel inertia switch did not trigger on my truck, but it did on the SuperDuty. The SD's airbags did not go off, it was a 2006.

 

The above is basically the same hit my trk took but the bottom right filler panel took the majority of the hit. [poked a hole in it and the frame-rail is sticking out] I dont not want to turn it in to ins. co. hence the $500.00 deductable. The parts needed i can get just for that amount without the neg. activity that the ins. co. will someday possibly use against us.

 

Scully, I didn't stop to think about the different Federal reg. concerning cars as opposed to trucks. Would think they would want to protect occupants of both, but there is a whole lot that goes into the equation between what the Fed's require on trucks as opposed to cars and what the manufacturer is willing to add in cost to anything beyond what they are forced to. The bean counters definitely have job security on this one. I often saw that discrepancy in the performance of equipment from what is seemed it should be. I imagine the MY (even 1 or 2) could well make a difference.