AtWhatMileage
Airbag · 4 owner reports

Seat belt or retractor failure on the 2005 GMC Yukon Denali

Only 1 report for this mode came with an odometer reading, which is too few for percentiles to mean anything. The page is here because someone linked to it; treat the figures as anecdotes, and see the full report for this year instead.

Reports of this failure 4
With an odometer reading 1
Reports per 1,000 built 14 per 1,000
Filed below 36,000 miles 0%
Mention a crash, fire or injury 0
Typical repair $200–$900
What it means when it happens High
Rank among this year's problems 5th

When seat belt or retractor failure gets reported

There are 4 reports of seat belt or retractor failure on the 2005 GMC Yukon Denali, 1 with a mileage attached. That is too few to place the failure on the odometer with any confidence.

A part like this is normally expected to survive 82,000 miles. It is the 5th most-reported problem on this model year.

The whole distribution

Percentiles of the 1 odometer readings owners gave.
10th25thMedian 75th90th
— — 80,000 miles — —

Read the 10th percentile as “one report in ten arrived this early”. Exact figures are shown in this table because it is the table of record; everywhere else on the site they are rounded to the precision the sample can carry.

What a percentile can and cannot tell you here

These five numbers describe the readings owners gave, in order. The median is the middle one: half the reports arrived below it. The 10th and 90th are the edges of the bulk of the distribution, and the distance between them is the part worth reading. A tight spread — say 70,000 to 95,000 miles — points at something that wears out on a schedule, and the schedule is knowable. A wide one, 20,000 to 190,000, points at a fault that hits some cars and never troubles others, which means the mileage on the listing in front of you tells you very little about your odds.

What these figures are not is a survival curve. Every reading here comes from a car whose owner filed a complaint, so the sample contains only failures: it cannot say what share of the fleet made it past 150,000 miles untouched, because those owners had nothing to report. Nor is the mileage the moment of failure — it is the odometer reading as recalled at the time of filing, which may be weeks later and is sometimes rounded to the nearest ten thousand by the person typing it.

Percentiles are shown at all only once 8 readings exist for the vehicle and mode. Below that the middle of a handful of numbers is noise wearing a decimal point, so the figures are withheld rather than dressed up.

What happens, and what it costs

Putting it right typically runs $200–$900 at an independent US shop. That range is an editorial estimate held in this site's failure-mode catalogue, not a figure from NHTSA, and it is a repair cost rather than a diagnosis cost.

The same failure, every year of the GMC Yukon Denali

If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.

Median
  1. 2001 GMC Yukon Denali seat belt or retractor failure 97k
  2. 2002 GMC Yukon Denali seat belt or retractor failure
    no odometer readings given
    —
  3. 2003 GMC Yukon Denali seat belt or retractor failure 100k
  4. 2005 (this one) 80k
  5. 2007 GMC Yukon Denali seat belt or retractor failure 110k
  6. 2008 GMC Yukon Denali seat belt or retractor failure 70k
  7. 2009 GMC Yukon Denali seat belt or retractor failure 148k
  8. 2011 GMC Yukon Denali seat belt or retractor failure
    no odometer readings given
    —
  9. 2015 GMC Yukon Denali seat belt or retractor failure 55k

Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens

What owners wrote

Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.

The plastic surround around my seat belt is defective. The plastic tabs have broken from normal usage and the surround now impedes either latching or unlatching, and the seat belt comes unlatched when it appears to be properly latched. Other vehicles of the same year/model have the same issue, and the same issue has occurred on multiple seat belts on the same vehicle. This is clearly a safety issue, because (1) the seat belt either appears to be latched when it is not; or (2) the seat belt will not unlatch when the release is depressed, preventing occupants from egressing the vehicle quickly if needed. The tabs holding the plastic surround are too small and allow the buckle to flex and jam, or they break off and interfere with the latch mechanism.

80,000 miles NHTSA complaint 1311995 filed 2016-08-26

Also reported on the 2005 GMC Yukon Denali

How far this goes

This page is kept out of search results because 4 reports is not enough to publish percentiles from. It stays reachable because somebody looking at this exact car would rather see the reports than be told there are none.

Complaints are voluntary, so 4 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.

Questions this page answers

At what mileage does seat belt or retractor failure happen on the 2005 GMC Yukon Denali?

Across 1 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 80,000 miles. A quarter were filed before — and a quarter after —. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.

How common is seat belt or retractor failure on the 2005 GMC Yukon Denali?

4 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 14 per 1,000 vehicles. Complaints are voluntary, so this is a floor rather than a count of affected cars.

What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars

Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed