Seat belt twisting issue

BMW i3 Forum

Help Support BMW i3 Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

PDXelectric

Well-known member
Joined
Apr 27, 2015
Messages
52
Hi,

I have had my i3 for close to 4 months. One thing I noticed right away is that the seat belt was never in the proper orientation. I eventually brought it in to the dealer and they found that it was not properly installed at the factory.(backwards) Everything was aligned and appropriate afterwards. However, I notice that the belt has a tendency to fold and get stuck at the rolling mechanism. Occasionally, if I just pull to straighten it, the belt twists around. This can be untwisted with significant effort. I have never owned the car with this tendency before. Anybody else have these issues?

Thanks
 
Strangely, me either. Mine seem to behave.

One of my other cars, the front passenger side tag gets caught the wrong way beside the seat when the occupant exits, and it rattles against the pillar until I reach over and straighten it out.
 
I'm guessing you are referring to the front seatbelt(s)? I noticed my rear passenger seatbelt was backwards as well. May need to bring it in to get fixed.
 
Yeah - I periodically have the problem where the belt is twisted and sucked into the roller. It frees up with a good strong tug. I'm not sure why this happens.
 
I have had this issue since buying my car, and I have reported it to my nearest dealer several times and even demonstrated it for the service foreman.

My driver's belt now has a crease through the middle due to this issue.

Of course, they stated, its all normal.
 
This has only happened to me once, I twisted it back when I realized I had a twist when buckled in. But that's once in around 1.5 years and hasn't happened again.

I had never had that happen in any other car I've owned.
 
I’ve experienced this issue four times in one and a half years. I lease a model produced in December 2014. The driver’s side seat belt will become twisted. I first noticed this when the car was new. I took the car to the dealer a few days later and they fixed the problem, although they had to keep the car overnight. The belt didn’t seem to retract smoothly after that “fix”; perhaps they just re-twisted it in the wrong direction. Six months later, the problem resurfaced. This second time, I decided to fix it myself, by unbolting the attachment anchor at the bottom of the door and untwisting the belt. About six months later (last week), the belt was pulled fully out and wouldn’t retract. There was no slack left to untwist, as it was at the end of its travel. I took it back to the dealership and they repaired it again for no charge. This has never happened on any of my other cars in forty years of driving. The dealer provided a loaner car, another i3, and it too had a twisted driver’s side seat belt.
This time, they kept the car for four days for the second time in a month, as they apparently tried and failed to properly upgrade the electronic software for recall 61-21-16. So it seems to me that in addition to the seat belt issue, BMW needs to find a more reliable way of updating their firmware. Tesla does this automatically over-the-air. Every time my dealer tries to update the firmware, the car is in the shop for multiple days, because the update fails to load properly at least once, and often multiple times. To be fair, the dealership has made this whole upgrade process easier by providing a free loaner car each time.
 
While this isn't an excuse, it is my understanding that the local dealer does not have the software locally to upload into the car...it is individually customized by VIN for your specific vehicle and pushed to the dealership while your car is hooked up to their computer system. If they have a poor internet connection, or something gets dropped and must be retransmitted, it can take a very long time to get all of it there and correctly installed. It also is somewhat dependent on how busy the server is while this is all happening.
 
My seat belt was twisted ( had a twist ) on the driver side.
It used to keeps getting stuck all the time.

I gave car to dealer , who apparently "changed the seat belt and related parts " to fix this twist. I did not pay , so did not care
It became little better , but it was not good by any ways. My 10 year old honda works well 100% of times


after 3 months , it again has the same twist.
and is stuck 90% of the times

not sure what the dealer did , apart form pocketing a lot of money from BMW.

not sure , why BMW cannot make a decent seat belt in 2016.
:eek:
 
I just bought a used 2014 i3 REX and have this issue with the driver's side seat belt. Not only is the seat belt backwards, but it is also slow to retract, leading me to believe that it is twisted inside the rear door where it's stored. I would prefer to fix this myself. Has anyone found a fix for this besides bringing it to the dealer?
 
Back
Top