Jim Galbally

Alo All

When i bought my Evo someone had fitted some "lovely" budget spec cloth seats and a very tasteful steeringwheel:

obviously the Airbag light was on the dash as the airbag was missing, plus the budget seats dont have occupancy sensors or pretensioners.
Now in my madness i decided that i would prefer to put this back to original, perhaps i'm not cool enough for the "momo look".

anyway, I got a secondhand steering wheel on there, but when the SRS faults were reset the airbag light still stayed on, i was told this was down the the seat sensors being missing.

so, i bought some seats...


altho unfortunetely the connectors for both occupancy sensors are broken... grr...

anyway, bexley motorworks had an idea...

they went into the SRS menu and set the passsenger seat occupancy and drivers seat occupancy to "NOT INSTALLED"

upon resetting the faults, the drivers seat occupancy fault dissapeared, but the passenger seat one reappeared, it was showing as a stored fault that was no longer present! wierd.

anyway what was also showing was 04 IGNITION, DRIVERS AIRBAG

my first and most relevant question is:

does havnig that DRIVERS AIRBAG fault mean my airbag is either not properly connected or faulty? i mean it was 2ndhand but im not sure if its common for them to break.

secondly, do the seat occupancy sensor faults cause the SRS/Airbag to disable and throw up the airbag light?

athirdly, should setting the occupancy sensors to NOT INSTALLED have cleared both faults, can anyone explain why the passenger one came back?

and finally... reparing the sensors... i'm guessing they're just a 2 wire switch and so a length of wire and some connector blocks should see then reconnected? is it just this simple? and if so does it matter which was round the wires go? (ie is it just a 2 wire switch)

thanks for reading guys

ronf42

iTrader: (2)

I am sure that the sensor detects a drop in resistance, hence people put reisitors in place to fool the system into thinking everything is ok and no lights come on.

my e39 passenger one if playing up, when somebody sits in the seat the light comes on and after a while when nobody is in the seat, it will go off again until it is sat on again.

here is an ebay example of what you can get
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/BMW-E46-E36-E3...item2a0d35f55b

jameswrx

Check the coil ribbon connection for the steering wherl airbag, they do snap on these. I actually successfully soldered one back up ( but can't advise you do that obviously)

DangerousBryan

Wouldn't the horn stop working as well if that had broken though?
I have got a spare horn ring/clock spring if you want it Jim.

R5FORD

iTrader: (1)

Im assuming that it would be linked I mean the airbag being faulty/ not working.. There would have to be some kind of warning surely?

Jim Galbally

ive bought one of those bypass things for the seat so ill get that in sharpish.

as for this cable/ring stuff, is there a way i can inspect it without removing anything dramatic?

bryan, if you think that ring thing might be worth trying i'd like to have a go yeah

ps the horn does work