Bucket seats and airbags
 

Recently bought a MY 01 bugeye WRX PPP from a Subaru dealer and arranged to have the standard seats swapped for a set of sports buckets from another car on his forecourt. Today the car went to the dealer who now says that the buckets can't be fitted as they dont have the side airbags that the standard seats have. My question is; can the seats be swapped and the plugs on the car wiring harness blanked so that the airbag warning light doesn't come on and the other airbags still work correctly. The dealer says not, but I reckon that the car wiring harness will be standard for all WRX's of that age irrespective of what options are fitted. Can't help thinking that the dealer is being a bit 'smart' with m.

Our 02 (bugeye) WRX came with buckets as standard. I dont think they would make two different wiring harnesses for one model, so there should be a way.

Adam

of course theres a way. Theres always a way especially with electrics, tell him to go screw himself and find a better dealer

Can't be 100% but I am sure they can be with a bit of fiddling! There have been some other posts on here about this recently about this specific mod so you will get a better answer I am sure but it is something to do with the the sensors in the airbag seats. You can get around the warning light problem by fitting some resistors of a certain value in the redundant plugs under the seats (bought from Maplin or by using part of a bit from a dealer !). That way you fool the ecu in thinking that the seats still have airbags.

The only thing I would say though is that I can see why the dealer would say it can't be done for two reasons.

One being that he will end up with a set of airbag seats in a car that doesn't have the wiring built in to be able to use them (the airbag wiring is built into the car in the factory as part of the build code and isn't present on non airbag seats models) so he would be selling the other car with a feature that doesn't work. That would leave him having to say that the airbag seats won't work or keeping quiet and hoping that the buyer doesn't have an accident where the airbags would have been 'useful'! Also from his point of view he would be messing around with the safety side of your car which, if something went wrong like you stuff it and none of the airbags deploy, he would be in court in a flash being sued by your insurance company!

If thats what you really want to do though you might be better off buying seats from a post on here (STI interior and the like) and doing the mod yourself - recognising the risks though.

Good luck

Nick

Noticed you're from Newcastle, if the dealer is CD Bramell don't bother, they're pretty useless.

As mentioned above there will be some electronic wizardry to sort it out but might be easier to keep the seats you've got and look for an STi interior to fit.

http://www.tyneteesscoobies.com/
http://bbs.scoobynet.co.uk/showthread.php?t=389840

Subaru will not swap the seats for you as legal matters over the safety of the car if you was to have a accident in a car thats SUPPOST to have side airbags. But they are allowed to supply you with the part which YOU fit, and cant see how they can refuse to take the old seats back.

the wiring loom is the same accross all cars, but it is normally turned on/off at the airbag ecu. in order to stop the airbag indicator coming on if airbag is removed is to plug in a 3.3ohm resister into it. i did and works fine. total cost of resisters 12p :)

You need to contact Joggerboy on this forum. He changed his WRX 'sport seats' for Sti buckets. He had to fit a couple of resisters costing 'pence' to by-pass the air bag circuits that run the side bags in his old seats. All the info he needed was obtained on this site though, so if he can't help you then others will.

:Suspiciou Sounds like a dealership near me. ;)

Calling that particular dealership 'pretty useless' would be a kindness, and only about 1% of the way to correctly describing how they run their 'operation' IMO, allegedly, etc. :mad:

fit a resistor to an airbag circuit.....

lol there are lots of urban heros in one thread....

for your information... mess around with the airbag circuit of a car and you run a risk of serious injury or death.......fact.

given that an airbag needs much less than 12v to set it off, just the static from your hands can fire a bag... I should know i used to make and test these babys for a living...

also the superwise (stupid) oems decided that they no longer liked yellow as the identifying colour of the airbag circuit in a car and changed a lot of the wiring to black... good choice !!!!

apart from the insurance implications, the airbags are there for one reason and one reason only , to prevent you from serious injury in the event of an accident. if you remove them and you have an accident where they could have saved you, well its your call,,, vanity or life... i know where i,d rather be.

oh and by the way, should you feck it up and manage to deploy any of the otherbags in your car, the mess is amazing and also the smell, should knock a few grand of the value of the car in a few milliseconds

Mart :D

I changed my sport seats to buckets in my bugeye WRX and put the resistor mod in and worked fine. My local dealer pointed my in the right direction, fitted the seats myself and took 1 hour at the most to change them from start to finish.

Go 4 it!!!

SB

I don't suppose you could stick your head under one of your seats and tell me if there is a spare plug lying around.... that would indicate that the loom is standard whether seat airbags are fitted or not. Thanks for the reply anyway!

Peter

Thanks for the reply, but to be fair, it's not Bramells.

I will have a look but im in school at the moment. I'll look at the weekend and PM you.

Adam