E46 seat swap help - new problem occurred

[Jimbob789 1]

Ive searched and searched but can't really get a clear answer,

I've upgraded the seats in my 99 E46 328i sedan from cloth to leather.

On the leather seats, the seatbelt pretensioner has a seperate yellow plug where as on the old seats, the pretensioner wiring goes into the main plug.

So the problem is that I have no where to plug the yellow plug into which causes my airbag light to go on.

How do I sort this?

I've got a airbag reset tool too and it just says the passenger side but I'm pretty sure the drivers side is the same.

Thanks,

Jamie

Edited October 27, 2012 by Jimbob789

[allan 295]

Not sure I can help but changing from cloth to leather would have no bearing on the belt tensioners that I could see.

Do you know the year and type of vehicle the seats came from.

Are your orginal seats and these new ones manual or electric controlled.

Have a look on WDS spaghetti wiring codes it might be able to help you

The front cloth electric operated seat I have all go into one large yellow connnector as do the ones on the manual seats on the other car although on the manual seats the connector is smaller.

[Jimbob789 1]

Thanks for the reply, I think they came from a 2001 e46 and they are both electric although the cloth ones has the memory button.

They both have a large yellow connector but on the leather there is a seperate small yellow connector that goes to the pretensioner whereas on the cloth, there isn't. The tensioner wire goes into the big yellow main plug.

Bit confusing to right haha

[[email protected] 0]

Hey man.

I replaced my cloth seats with leather seats earlier in the year, and may have run into a similar issue too...

I have an E46 '00 (late '99 model actually) and I got the leather seats from an '01 I think it was. Non electric, non fold down, non memory, none of all that snazzy stuff.

What I noticed was that the seat belt pre-tensioners from the leather seats did not wire up correctly to my car and I had the airbag light code come on. I used RealOEM.com and found out that at some stage the P/N changed (for the drivers side ((8 257 788 R) to (8 253 734 R)), but was fine for the passenger side (8 257 787 L)) and so yeah...

I just put my seat belt pretensioner from my old seats on to my new seats and worked like a charm.

You should have one wire for each seat belt pretensioner, and then an extra one that plugs into the weight mat (can't think of the word) on the passenger seat (this is so it can tell whether to deploy the airbag on the passenger side, obviously if no one is sitting there there's no need for it go off..)

Not sure if this helps, or if it's all entirely correct but hopefully might help you out.

[*Glenn* 855]

Jon will be able to help you. It's had a new wiring loom fitted for the pretensioner. It can be hard wired quite easily

Contact: http://jksoutherneuro.webs.com/

[Jimbob789 1]

Thanks for the replies, so I swapped both pretensioners from my old seats onto the new seats so now all wired perfect, cleared the code using the b800 reset tool and was all good, the light went off (took ages, still don't really know how to use it. Code comes up in the FA section, click enter and does nothing. Nothing comes up in clear codes. After clicking enter for ages, it eventually goes)

So took it for a drive and was fine. 3 minutes into it the airbag light comes back on.

Scanned it and now has fault code 01 01 - control unit fault - a/d converter.

What have I done to it?

Everything is plugged in and haven't been near the control unit. Starting to frustrate me heaps!

[allan 295]

Did you have the battery dis-connected while you did your swap over?

[Jimbob789 1]

Did you have the battery dis-connected while you did your swap over?

The first time I didn't but I did the second time

[[email protected] 0]

Only thing I can think to ask is:

Are your old cloth seats and new leather seats spec'd the same?

I'm guessing because mine were both the same (non-electric, non-memory) my fix worked - I did have to get Jeff Gray BMW in Welly to remove the airbag light but I've got a mate who works there so it was free.

If you're upgrading or downgrading - maybe it'd pay to read through a retrofit diy and see what needed to be done?

i.e. http://forum.e46fanatics.com/showthread.php?t=348165

Or yeah, contact the guy *Glenn* mentioned above.

[allan 295]

Know from experience if you mess with the air bag system with the battery connected and disconnect anything it will throw a warning light and it can be a pain to get it cleared and have it stay cleared.