When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
Stock Problems/IssuesDiscussions related to warranty related issues and repairs, or other problems with the OEM parts and software for MINI Cooper (R50), Cabrio (R52), and Cooper S (R53) MINIs.
I know there are plenty of airbag light threads but my situation is... unique.
2004 R53
When I got the car the driver's seat was shot and passenger seat was from an 07+?!? No lights on originally. Swapped both seats with donors from an '06. But '06 seat belt buckle has a different harness plug than my car so I took the buckle from the 07+ seat that was originally in the car (presumably the buckle was transferred to the '07 seat from the original). Now have airbag light on. INPA screenshot below. There were 2 other codes as well but they cleared and did not return. This one won't go away. Roughly translated I understand it has something to do with the seat belt but not sure where to go from here. Electrical connections all seem good. Anyone have any deeper insight on what I should try next?
Crap! I've been working on this car so long I'm mixing up what I've done. It was the driver's seat that I swapped belt buckles on! So the passenger's seat was plug and play which changes everything. My bad, it's been 4 months since I bought this car and it's still not on the road yet Is anyone familiar with the error I posted? This is the LAST issue preventing me from getting the car to pass inspection and I'm dying to have some fun with it! I'm thinking of trying the resistor trick to get the light off for inspection but I don't have a resistor handy and it might take a bit to get one and I'd really rather fix the underlying problem. The occupancy pad, I'm assuming, is the black 2 pin connector? My 04 of course doesn't have the harness for that and seeing as it has it's own plug I'm guessing the pad couldn't be part of the problem?
Have you checked all your fuses and harnesses for split, bent, or pinched wires?
I would personally pull the buckle mechanism and dissemble it; clean it and check the contacts.
Im not sure familiar with the r53 seats; but generally the pad sensor is its own plug; but maybe someone who’s done some seat work has more insight to if it’s daisy chained to another wire in the seat harness.
Do you still have the old seats that didn’t give off a light? You should plug the driver seat back in and see if it goes off; at least then you can maybe narrow the problem.
If anyone reading this has an '02-'04, could you be so kind as to check your passenger side pretensioner and tell me how many wires are run into it? I'm seeing some pretensioners have 1 wire terminating with the blue plug, and then others have 2 wires terminating with a blue plug on one and a black plug on the other. My car's passenger side harness doesn't have a black plug to connect to the second wire, so maybe I need to order a pretensioner with just the 1 wire.
The driver's side has 2 wires and I had to put the pretensioner from my '04 onto the new seat because the second plug (not the blue one) was different from my harness so maybe there's more of a difference than I originally thought. Haven't had any issues with the driver's side though.
Again, the passenger seat and tensioner are from an '06 and my car is an '04. I'm trying to figure out where I screwed up without having to order a lot parts unnecessarily.
I've pulled the seat again. The obvious is that on the seat there are 2 wires that go to the pretensioner, the one that ends with the blue plug, and the other with a black plug but my harness has nothing to connect to the black plug. The other thing is that the wiring is different between the black plug on the car harness vs the white plug on the seat. You can see the wires going into the plugs go to different "ports"? 3 all together on white, brown wire off to the side on black. Thoughts?
you can order the repair harness for the seat to use your 06 seats in the 04. you have a pre-lift 04, so they changed the harness in the late 04-06 setup. i probably have my complete seat assemblies from my 02 mcs in the garage, i can take pics of tonight. the white plug on the 06 seat is the oc3 mat, which your car does not have connections for, nor will it cause an airbag light not plugged in. you didnt have heated seats in your 04, yet the 06 seats have heated seats (rectangular black plug on seat). you need to swap for a pre -04 passenger side belt tensioner to fix your problem, probably easier than cutting apart the tensioner and soldering a resister and a new lead so the harness works correct.
Thanks for the info! Would the pre-04 tensioner be the type with only the blue plug? I've seen tensioners for sale with only 1 plug and then some with 2 like this '06 seat has. I'm still learning Minis and SRS systems are not the kind of thing I usually tinker with, so the help is appreciated! For my own curiosity, I get the blue and yellow plugs on my harness, what is the black one for?
10-25-2018, 09:02 PM
Is anyone familiar with the error I posted? This is the LAST issue preventing me from getting the car to pass inspection and I'm dying to have some fun with it! I'm thinking of trying the resistor trick to get the light off for inspection but I don't have a resistor handy and it might take a bit to get one and I'd really rather fix the underlying problem. The occupancy pad, I'm assuming, is the black 2 pin connector? My 04 of course doesn't have the harness for that and seeing as it has it's own plug I'm guessing the pad couldn't be part of the problem?
