Inflatable Restraint Seat Belt Pretensioners

WARNING: This page is about a different car, the 2002 Pontiac Montana, 2002 Oldsmobile Silhouette, and 2002 Chevrolet Venture. However, it is still accessible from the selected car via links, so may be relevant.

The seat belt pretensioners consist of a housing, an initiator, a canister of gas generating materials, a routing cable with a piston attached, and a piston tube. The initiator is part of the seat belt pretensioner deployment loop. When the vehicle is involved in a collision of sufficient force, the SDM causes current to flow through the seat belt deployment loops to the initiator. Current passing through the initiator ignites the material in the canister producing a rapid generation of gas. The gas produced from this reaction deploys the seat belt pretensioners and shortens the seat belt pretensioner height, which removes all of the slack in the seat belts. The seat belt pretensioners will deploy immediately before the frontal inflator modules deploy. Each seat belt pretensioner is equipped with a shorting bar that is located in the connector of the seat belt pretensioner. The shorting bar shorts the seat belt pretensioner circuitry to prevent unwanted deployment of the seat belt pretensioner when the connector is disconnected.