Ford Expedition, Lincoln Navigator, model years 2018 to 2020. Filed by Ford Motor Company and reported to NHTSA on 23 May 2025. 112,951 vehicles potentially affected.
What the notice says Ford Motor Company (Ford) is recalling certain 2018-2020 Expedition and Lincoln Navigator vehicles. The seat belt pretensioner in the driver and/or front passenger seat may inadvertently lock the seat belt, which will not allow the belt to retract or extend.
Is your vehicle included? Check with your VIN at NHTSA, or ask a dealer. This page is an independent copy of the notice, kept so you can see what changed after it was published. It is not the authority, and the authority’s own text is the one to act on.
Ford's own number for this recall: 25S31. That is the number on the owner letter and on the dealer paperwork. 25V197 is the number NHTSA gave the same campaign, and the number this page is filed under. They are one recall, written two ways.
What owners ask about this recall
- Which vehicles does recall 25V197 cover?
- Ford Expedition, Lincoln Navigator, model years 2018-2020.
- What is wrong with them?
- Ford Motor Company (Ford) is recalling certain 2018-2020 Expedition and Lincoln Navigator vehicles. The seat belt pretensioner in the driver and/or front passenger seat may inadvertently lock the seat belt, which will not allow the belt to retract or extend.
- What can happen if it is not put right?
- Seat belts that do not retract or extend can fail to restrain an occupant as intended, increasing the risk of injury in a crash.
- Is there a fix yet?
- Yes, and it is free. Dealers will replace the seat belt retractors as necessary, free of charge. Owner notification letters were mailed October 22, 2025. Owners may contact Ford customer service at 1-866-436-7332. Ford's number for this recall is 25S31.
- What should I do now?
- Check your own vehicle by its VIN with NHTSA, which is the record to act on. Ford calls this recall 25S31, which is the number on the owner letter and the dealer paperwork.
Answered from the register this site holds. NHTSA is the record to act on.
What the authority says can happen if this is not fixed: “Seat belts that do not retract or extend can fail to restrain an occupant as intended, increasing the risk of injury in a crash.”
affected
in the notice
caught
| Campaign | 25V197 |
|---|---|
| Filed by | Ford Motor Company |
| System at fault | Seat Belts:Pretensioner |
| Reported to NHTSA | 23 May 2025 |
| Model years | 2018-2020 |
| Vehicles named | FORD EXPEDITION, LINCOLN NAVIGATOR |
What the notice says today
The defect
Ford Motor Company (Ford) is recalling certain 2018-2020 Expedition and Lincoln Navigator vehicles. The seat belt pretensioner in the driver and/or front passenger seat may inadvertently lock the seat belt, which will not allow the belt to retract or extend.
The consequence
Seat belts that do not retract or extend can fail to restrain an occupant as intended, increasing the risk of injury in a crash.
The remedy
Dealers will replace the seat belt retractors as necessary, free of charge. Owner notification letters were mailed October 22, 2025. Owners may contact Ford customer service at 1-866-436-7332. Ford's number for this recall is 25S31. Some vehicles in this recall that were previously inspected under recall 24V-099 and did not have parts replaced will need to have this new recall remedy completed.
What it said before
Nothing has changed while we have been watching. We last read the wording of this campaign on 17 September 2026, and it matched the copy we already held.
That copy hashes to d9cba586a73810c244001d240929c645…, so if it is ever edited the change is provable rather than a matter of memory.
This is one of 451 notices in the record whose component field names seat belts. Across that group the median wait before owners were written to was 48 days.
Last checked . No change has been recorded in the wording.
The same recall in other countries
This campaign carries a manufacturer code that also appears in another country’s register, which means the same defect was recalled there too.
- Canada: Transport Canada recall 2025164, recorded 28 March 2025 (56 days before the American filing)
Matched on 25S31, the manufacturer’s own number for this campaign, which is the only field the registers share. Exact match, nothing paired on brand and date. The two dates are adjacent instruments rather than the same one, so a difference of a day or two means nothing.
How often the two countries file on the same day · The European alerts
The models named here, across their whole recall history
How to cite this record
Quoting the wording on this page means quoting a version, so the date belongs in the citation:
CarsMultiverse, recall 25V197, wording as read on 17 September 2026. https://carsmultiverse.com/recall/25v197/
The copy quoted above hashes to d9cba586a73810c244001d240929c645…. If the notice is reworded later, that fingerprint will not match, which is how a reader checks that the quotation was of the version we say it was.
The cross-border matches used on this site are deposited as a citable dataset: doi:10.5281/zenodo.22087136. The recall wording itself is published by the national authority named above and is theirs, not ours.
The recall record and its wording are published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and are US Government public domain. The dated archive, the comparison and any before-and-after above are CarsMultiverse. How fresh every engine behind this page is, is public on the status page. To check a specific vehicle, use NHTSA’s own VIN lookup.
Other Ford notices we hold
- 26V579: 2026-2027 Transit
- 26V578: 2023-2027 F-150
- 26V577: 2026 F-150
- 26V576: 2026 F-150
- 26V550: 2026 Maverick, F-150, and Bronco Sport
- 26V548: 2026 Explorer, Bronco, Bronco Sport, Mustang, and Ranger
- 26V547: 2024-2026 Mustang
- 26V532: 2026 Explorer
All 776 Ford campaigns we hold · Every manufacturer in the record
The fingerprint of this notice
We take a SHA-256 of each of the three blocks of text the authority publishes and keep the first eight characters. As we last read campaign 25V197 on 23 August 2026, they were:
- Defect summary
2b29a4d2 - Consequence
447694d0 - Remedy
e30bfa91
We first read this notice on 21 August 2026. It has not moved since. If it ever does, these characters will not match, and the change will be dated here.
The wording we hold for 25V197 · how the whole register is watched
This notice names one vehicle among several registers that have written about it. Every notice this site holds for the Ford Expedition, in all seven, is kept on that vehicle's own page, with the newest in each.
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Owners of these cars
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