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I have been driving Max for a while now with the airbag light illuminated on the dash. I found that even unbuckling my seat belt would not light the seat belt light as it should. So I surmised the restraint system was not seeing my buckle. I scanned it and came up with the following error.
So I figured the seat belt buckle was shorted internally, so rather than take it apart I ordered a new buckle from West Covina. I unbolted the seat to make access for changing out the buckle easier, all be it being careful to not tug on the air bag connectors under the seat. I guess I need not be afraid of tugging on the wires and lighting up the air bag light because it was already on. Well I installed the new buckle and fired up my code scanner and found that the seat belt error would not clear. So I thought there is no way this new buckle is faulty. Well I unplugged the buckle and ran the scanner in datastream mode to see what was going on. I got the following error.
So that tells me the controller "sees" the new buckles internal switch and therefore knew it was not connected. But yet it will not clear the air bag light, so obviously there is still a problem. I connected my multimeter to both buckles old and new to check for continuity either open or closed with and without a post inserted into the buckle to simulate "being" buckled. Both ways it showed no continuity. So further investigation online told me that most seat belts show 100 ohms when the buckle is latched and supposedly 400 ohms when it is unlatched. Well testing both buckles including the passenger one with my multimeter on the proper scale to read the 100 ohm and proper scale to read 400 ohms and I get nothing acrossed any of the buckles latched or unlatched. It seems I should have absolute continutiy or not or the 100 or 400 ohm approximate reading on one or more of the buckles. Anyone have any firsthand experience with Smart seat belts? It wouldn't surprise me if Smart didn't do something unique. But I admit it has me stumped. DCO
So I figured the seat belt buckle was shorted internally, so rather than take it apart I ordered a new buckle from West Covina. I unbolted the seat to make access for changing out the buckle easier, all be it being careful to not tug on the air bag connectors under the seat. I guess I need not be afraid of tugging on the wires and lighting up the air bag light because it was already on. Well I installed the new buckle and fired up my code scanner and found that the seat belt error would not clear. So I thought there is no way this new buckle is faulty. Well I unplugged the buckle and ran the scanner in datastream mode to see what was going on. I got the following error.
So that tells me the controller "sees" the new buckles internal switch and therefore knew it was not connected. But yet it will not clear the air bag light, so obviously there is still a problem. I connected my multimeter to both buckles old and new to check for continuity either open or closed with and without a post inserted into the buckle to simulate "being" buckled. Both ways it showed no continuity. So further investigation online told me that most seat belts show 100 ohms when the buckle is latched and supposedly 400 ohms when it is unlatched. Well testing both buckles including the passenger one with my multimeter on the proper scale to read the 100 ohm and proper scale to read 400 ohms and I get nothing acrossed any of the buckles latched or unlatched. It seems I should have absolute continutiy or not or the 100 or 400 ohm approximate reading on one or more of the buckles. Anyone have any firsthand experience with Smart seat belts? It wouldn't surprise me if Smart didn't do something unique. But I admit it has me stumped. DCO
