Engineering Analysis EA13-001: Child Seat Harness Buckle

The Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) opened this investigation as PE12-031 on October 15, 2012 to investigate harness buckles in car seats produced by Graco Children's Products, Inc. (Graco).

During the investigation ODI discovered that Graco used three different harness buckle designs in the manufacture of certain booster, convertible, and rear facing infant (RFI) car seats produced between 2005 and 2014.

The three buckle designs are identified as the ?Signature, ?QT, and ?QT3 which were all manufactured by AmSafe Commercial Products, Inc.

All three buckles use unique internal latch components and operate differently, and all have different release button designs.

On February 7, 2014, Graco submitted a Defect Information Report (DIR) to recall 3,773,379 toddler and booster seats produced with the buckles described above.

On March 7, 2014, Graco amended the DIR adding an additional 403,222 toddler and booster seats in the recall.

Please see safety recall 14C-001 for details related to the recall.

On June 27, 2014, Graco submitted a second DIR recalling 1,910,102 RFI car seats produced with the QT1 buckle.

This DIR also stated that Graco would conduct a Customer Satisfaction Campaign (CSC) to replace the Signature and QT3 buckles used on the non-recalled RFI models for the useful life of the car seat (seven years from the date of manufacture).

Under the CSC, users of the non-recalled car seats can obtain a replacement buckle, free of charge, should they have a concern with their buckle.

In addition to the approximately 6.1 million recalled car seats, the CSC covers approximately 2.3 million RFI car seats.

Please see safety recall 14C-004 for additional details of the recall and CSC.ODI is closing this investigation based on Graco's recall and CSC actions to replace the buckles in all of the car seats it produced with Signature, QT1 and QT3 buckles.

Additional information concerning the investigation can be found in the closing report available on SaferCar.gov.

The ODI reports cited above can be viewed at http://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/owners/SearchSafetyIssues under the following ID numbers:Convertible and Booster (162): 10454450,10454393,10450712,10446071,10445997,10445988,10445975,10428246,10421053,10418155, 10413817,10406827,10402771,10397449,10473717,10466250,10463507,10455029,10454295,10444493, 10413648,10401202,10475529,10467797,10444593,10433600,10414471,10414449,10410574,10392858,10384014,10383056, 10366950,10366522,10363586,10361369,10430498,10456547,10397307,10475529,10381470,10381465,10366645,10312165,10477267,10478809,10481182,10481243,10481236,10481233,10481219,10482654,10482941,10483551,10483732,10483940,10485417,10486165,10487751,10487824,10489662,10488855,10489296,10489536,10490292,10491819,10493243,10493351,10493614,10493649,10493668,10493620,10494411,10494567,10494580,10494769,10494876,10493716,10494635,10495130,10495042,10495301,10496034,10496146,10496063,10496344,10496470,10497637,10497771,10498293,10498468,10498529,10499325,10499426,10499547,10499718,10499706,10499775,10500067,10500604,10500828,10500814,10501073,10501314,10501480,10502290,10502580,10502711,10502990,10504056,10504076,10505061,10504727,10504743,10505107,10505150,10505393,10508181,10508007,10509096,10509116,10510061,10510620,10511254,10511591,10512725,10514281,10516073,10521015,10524253,10482283,10260861,10260630,10260622,10260619,10260251,10524928,10526273,10526254,10531818,10533013,10533662,10535355,10548933,10549812,10549404,10550369,10550731,10550926,10551551,10552014,10552114,10554347,10555537,10556441,10558757,10559124,10561932,10561769,10561786,10562299,10563648 RFI (30): 10498308,10500767,10522316,10537013,1054348