Why Ford Recalled the Same Seat Belt Three Times: The 2018–2022 Expedition and Navigator Saga

In late May 2026, Ford filed NHTSA campaign 26V344000 covering roughly 420,000 full-size SUVs, specifically 2018-2022 Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator models, for a front seat belt that can stop working the way a seat belt is supposed to. On its own, a seat belt recall on a body-on-frame family hauler is notable. What makes this one worth understanding is that it is the third recall for the same defect on the same vehicles in about two years, and each one has been larger than the last.

The defect sits in a component most people never think about: the seat belt retractor pretensioner.

What a pretensioner does, and what's going wrong

A pretensioner is a small pyrotechnic device built into the seat belt assembly. When a crash sensor fires, it uses a controlled charge to instantly take up slack in the belt, pulling the occupant tight against the seat a fraction of a second before crash forces peak. It is one of the reasons a modern belt restrains far better than the lap belts of decades past.

In the affected Expeditions and Navigators, the driver and/or front passenger retractor pretensioner can deploy inadvertently, with no crash to set it off. When that happens, the belt locks. According to the recall report, that produces one of two failure modes:

Either outcome ends in the same place: a front belt that is not seated correctly across the chest and lap. If a real crash follows, the restraint cannot do its job, and the risk of injury rises. On vehicles this size, full-size SUVs that routinely carry families, that is not a minor compliance issue. It is a restraint-system defect, which is why it lands in a high-severity tier rather than a cosmetic or labeling one.

Ford has attributed the root cause to degradation of the propellant inside the pretensioner. In high-heat environments, oxidation of internal components over time can make the charge unstable enough to fire on its own. That matters here, because heat-driven chemical degradation is a slow process. It shows up after vehicles have been in the field for years, which helps explain why this recall has been a moving target.