My passenger's seat occupancy sensor and/or ECU died, which disables the airbag. I purchased a used seat from a junkyard. If I swap this seat into my car, will I need to do any programming of the ECU or stuff the dealer needs to do? Or is it just the 4 bolts + cables (so I or a mom and pop shop can do it)?

 

Before swapping out parts, did you check the airbag codes with a good scanner? If theres a faulty seat sensor code, I would try unplugging the airbag plug inspecting it and run the code again. You can also check the resistance of the airbag with a volt meter to make sure it isnt shorted out before commiting to buying and swapping parts.


As for reprogramming you will not need any sort of programming of any sort when replacing airbag parts. The only time you need to reprogram the airbag module is if there was an airbag deployment/crash. Also why do you think the ecu is bad? The ECU is seperate from the airbag system. Doing a sweat swap is simple enough for you to do, its just unplug, unbolt and reverse.

 

The codes are B1795 and B1650, faulty passenger classification ECU and sensor respectively. A dealer swapped the ECU and said that they were still getting codes (B1650 I think but not sure) and that the only thing they could do was replace the seat. Now it's possible that this is still just a corroded wire or something and that fixing that plus doing a calibration would fix it, but at that point I'd be looking at a couple hundred bucks in labor at a dealer (mom and pop shops won't touch airbag ECU stuff it seems). The new seat was $150 and 5 miles away, so I figured I'd try that before going down the other path. And it might even be in better condition, mine has 200k miles on it.

Good to know the seat swap is simple. With respect to the airbag deployment, my car (the one the seat is going into) was not in a crash / did not have airbags deployed but the car the used seat is coming from was most certainly in a crash. I take it you were referring to the receiving car not the donor car, right?

 

Be sure to disconnect the battery when working on airbag system. Also, shouldnt you be able to replace just the sensor instead of the entire seat?

 

The part is like $500 new, you need to rip apart the seat to install it and you'd also need to do a calibration then (which only a dealer can do properly I think), so it's by far cheaper to buy a used seat.

 

I would still unplug the seat harness and maybe clean the terminals, you never know maybe some fluids spilled on the connector awhile back and it worked its way into the pins. Its ok to use the crashed donor parts into your car without needing to reprogram anything.