that bloody airbag warning and seat belt problems (e36)

[Ron Katona <ron3b@xxxxxxxx>]

Murray Wilks wrote:
> Quality gripe time... for the third time in two years, our airbag 
> warning light has come on. The two prior times was traced to faulty seat 
> belt latches, and I'll bet dollars to donuts that its the same problem 
> again.
> 
> This problem was also mentioned on one of the NHTSA gripe sites 
> (technical service bulletin 720196A). What is BMW's problem? Let's 
> continue replacing faulty parts with more faulty parts?  NOT IMPRESSED 
> AT ALL.

This is a very common problem. I've had three failures in two years. By
the end of this year (maybe sooner), I'll also be out of warranty
because I've taken so many long road trips with the car. I'm sure the
problem will appear again after the warranty expires. Even if I replace
the latches myself, the SRS fault has to be reset by the dealer. After
the warranty expires, the dealer ain't gonna see much of my car meaning
I'll be driving around with the SRS light on all the time.

I'm a bit concerned because as I understand it, this controls the force
with which the airbags deploy. There is a two stage system (or so I've
been told) that basically uses something like the Euro standard
explosion if you have your seatbelts on, but the US standard if you are
not belted. So what's the default with the seatbelt sensor broken? I
have to assume that for liability reasons in the US, it would be the
stronger explosion. Then again, I could be wrong about the whole thing -
can anyone confirm this two-stage airbag system?

Since no one will ever be in my car without being buckled in, I'd rather
have the lower airbag forces at all times.

My question is whether there is a connection that I could jump that
would fool the computer into thinking that the seatbelt is latched all
the time while bypassing the frequently failing latch sensors? If I did
that, I'd still have to get a dealer to reset the light one last time.
That could be sticky since they may not want to reset it without
performing a check on the SRS system and might find my illegal
modification.

If I can do this, I could eliminate the constant SRS warnings because of
this common failure and still have a safe car as long as my passengers
are belted in (and they will be). What to do if I sell the car becomes a
problem, but I don't plan on that for a long time.

So, does anyone know if there is a point I can tie into to bypass the
latch sensors?
- --
Ron Katona

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