How do you repair a 2002 Hyundai Elantra driver side seat belt that remains loose and does not retract?

Answer 1

== == == == In my case, the problem was a twisted seat belt and the twist got back to the retracting mechanism. What I did was the following: * Start where the seat belt is fastened near the floor of the car by the seat. Make sure the belt is not twisted as you rotate the belt around it's fastening bolt. * Now, keeping the belt untwisted, trace it up to the buckle. You know the belt is untwisted from the fastening bolt to the buckle if the buckle naturally points towards to fastening clasp by the center console/parking brake. I would think that it's very unlikely for the seat belt to be twisted from the fastening bolt to the buckle. * Now, trace the belt from the seat buckle to the shoulder harness fixture next to the seat's head rest. It's very likely there will be a twist as you trace this segment. You need to undo the twist be reversing the belt through the shoulder harness. This is hard to do and takes a fair amount of strength in your fingers. I only had one twist. I think it unlikely that there would be more than one, but you never know. * Once your done with that, you will likely have a twist from the shoulder harness down the side of the car to the slot where the seat belt disappears. You need to slowly pull the belt completely out of the slot. Then, at the slot opening, undo the twist that exists there. You will likely have to apply and remove tension on the belt at the slot as you do this. If you're lucky like I was, the twist will suddenly undo itself inside the belt slot and the seat belt will start to retract. Let it do so while guiding the belt to avoid another twist. This whole procedure took me on the order of 15 minutes. As I said above, the hardest part was undoing the twist through the shoulder harness. I didn't think to take pictures as I was doing this, which would have helped to make the above explanations easier to follow. Sorry about that. If your belt is not twisted, then you have a different problem which I don't know the answer to. I hope this helps someone. Jay Smith