What to do about the 05-06 passenger airbag weight sensor?

I am trying to put Lapis Blue leather heated seats from a 2004 into my 2006. I successfully removed the sensor from the seat cushion of the old seat. What a pain that was! It is basically a very thin circuit board that covers the entire surface area of the lower cushion between the seat cover and the foam. You have to almost completely remove the seat cover (hog rings and all) to get this thing off.

Anyway, now that I have it removed, what can I do with it to keep the passenger airbag active? I can't insert into the 2004 leather seat because MINI glues the seat cover to the foam. Ideally I'd like to fool it so that the passenger airbag is always active, as I will never have children under 50 pounds or a child seat in the passenger seat. I was thinking I could sandwich it between some type of thin/stiff board and place it between the bottom of the cushion and the seat frame, hoping the weight on the cushion would activate it.

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. What are people doing about this with their upgraded racing seats? Are they just letting the passenger airbag deactivate?

By the way, I have used the search function and have read through numerous threads without any luck.

- Chris

 

Well, you do have a dilemma. Most of us with racing seats have just installed the sensor under the foam above the hard shell, and it works just fine. But since you can't do it, you could just try your idea out. If it doesn't work, you can just wrap the sensor in a baggie and put it under the seat, plugged in. The airbag won't go off, but they didn't go off in cars that didn't have them before the 80s or whenever they were installed in cars. WGaF?
But, I can't see an easy solution for your particular situation, and I've never heard of someone actually wanting to put the sensor in a seat such as yours. But it might have happened--it's a big world, full of minis.
Good luck,

 

Chris, I am working on a similar issue but with a twist and I think you can help me if you are willing.

I have a defective seat occupancy switch which has turn on my AB light and I'm sure is preventing the passenger AB from firing in the event of an accident. This failed before and was replace under warranty (the entire seat upholstery too). It has failed again, and fortunately still under warranty, but I'm sure it will fail again sometime after the warranty has expired and I don't want to pay at that time.

My thinking and I'm following a similar thread over at the BMW Z3/4 forum for merely plugging in a proper resister to the airbag harness to fool the system into thinking a person is sitting in the seat.

I have purchased the specified resistors and diodes but cannot duplicate the circuit for my MINI.

Would you be willing to do a test for me?

Using an Ohm meter, measure the resistance on all the wires coming out of the seat switch with no pressure and also with more than 50 pounds on the switch. Please tell me which colored wires you are measuring and the resistance. I'm thinking the desired resistance is different from what the Z3/4 is using. I will build and test a resistor set for my MINI, if it works, I will supply you with the same information. Even though we need this fix for different reasons, the fix should be the same.

Under my 06 MCS passenger seat, the seat connector is the one with a connector that is one end white, the other end black, it is the one closest to the passenger door. Mine has three wires going into the connector from the harness but only two wires (red and white) going to the switch.

Thanks,

YD

 

Am I the only person have recurring failures of the passenger side seat occupancy switch on my 06? I'm out of warranty for the car, but the last seat switch is still under warranty but I'm about over this, I just want to install a bypass module of some sort and be done with it... Anyone making any progress on this?

thanks

YD

 

I would love it if someone would check this out however ours are most definitely different than the Z3's.

Ours use 3 wires, one is ground, one is power and one is to the SRS module.

I seriously doubt its just a simple resistance to trick the SRS computer....someone check please.

 

orangecrush here installed JCW seats (euro spec) and ended up transferring the weight sensor pad from the stock seat over to the new seat. He said that the pad has an electronic circuit with a microcomputer chip. It probably talks to the car's computer over a digital data connection, so it doesn't seem like a simple resistor would work.

 

Bingo!

I am wondering...could we trick the chip on the sensor?

hmm..... I'd sure like to see a nice close-up picture of this seat sensor / chip.

 

I think you're not the only one. I'm currently chasing an issue where I get an intermittent passenger airbag light (the orange one near the sunroof switch) as well as the red airbag light on the speedo both turned on. They go on and off randomly. From what I understand, if it was a loose connection under the seat, the red light would stay on until I had it reset. Since it will turn itself off every now and again, I doubt a loose wire is my problem. To make sure, I zip-tied all the connections together and added some strain relief to the main harness under each seat, but I'm still having the trouble. I'm studying electrical engineering in college so I don't think I'd have too much trouble with churning out some sort of resistor pack or whatever it may be to dupe my car into always considering the seat occupied when the seatbelt is buckled. I don't want to have it always think the seat is occupied, because it will ***** about the 'person' not being buckled in, even when no one's there. I'll probably be pretty busy with work this weekend and next weekend, but I'll try to get a bit of time in with the MINI soon and I'll let you know what I find.

 

This may be true (in fact it most likely is) but the bottom line is that somewhere in the system there has got to be an analog sensor to actually determine if the seat is occupied. If there is a microcontroller or similar appliance on the occupancy detector pad, it's quite likely that the spoofing can be performed before the controller actually reads in any info. This of course assumes (and relies on) the connection between the microcontroller in the seat and the ECU still being sound, but I feel like that's pretty easy to fix in the event that it isn't.

 

I would LOVE to see a picture of the seat sensor.

I know that the 3 wires on our 05-06 connector is power, ground and data bus.

The only way I can see to defeat this is to remove the pad / sensor and trick the processor that's attached to the sensor with a resistor....

 

Ours is doing the same thing as brad's. I've learned a Pavlovian response to the idiot lights turning on and off described by my MINI therapist as 'Ignoring the Situation'.

 

Here's what it looks like, it seems that pictures of this item is almost impossible to find online, speaking from my personal experience.



For the record I was able to disable that sensor completely in my car, and keep the airbag system working fine. Of course I can't test the srs system but every airbag, tensioner and sensor EXCEPT the seat sensor reports as working and I have no error codes or airbag light!


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