What is Best Solution Fixing Passenger Seat Airbag Sensor?

[rlubocki]

As usual with these cars, my passenger seat airbag sensor broke. What are my options ( looking for cheapest solution.)

Do I replace the physical mat, or just the sensor that is faulty? On EBay and some online stores there are emulators that bypass this fault. Are they any good?

[antennahead]

Originally Posted by rlubocki

As usual with these cars, my passenger seat airbag sensor broke. What are my options ( looking for cheapest solution.)

Do I replace the physical mat, or just the sensor that is faulty? On EBay and some online stores there are emulators that bypass this fault. Are they any good?

These guys coded out my airbag sensor to "not active"..... when you do that the passenger airbag works all the time. You can still turn it off if you need to via the key switch on the side of the dash. They are very reasonable and very knowledgable:

http://www.codemycar.com/

I just had them do this for me. The cheapest foolproof option, in my opinion. I tried one of the emulators, it worked, but kept my computer from going to sleep. I kept suffering drained battery issues. Code my car was worth every penny to me, FAR cheaper than replacing the poorly designed mat, only to have it break again in a few years so you have to do it all over again. YMMV

John

[rlubocki]

Thank you for great advice John, I don't know why BMW made things more difficult
Will give those guys a try, and let you know, thanks again for good advice

[rlubocki]

Do I send them that part, how will this work ?

[antennahead]

Originally Posted by rlubocki

Do I send them that part, how will this work ?

Go to their website and shoot them an email. The owner, who also does the coding, will email you back with specific instructions on how it works. You don't replace the sensor mat. He codes the computer to "not active" status for the mat so the computer stops looking for the mat to decide whether to turn on the passenger airbag based on weight in the seat. You can still turn off the airbag via the keyed on/off switch on the side of the dash. All of this assumes you don't have a young child in a car seat you need to carry with you, otherwise you'll be manually turning that thing on and off a lot.

[rlubocki]

Will definitely contact them, feel that is the best way instead of bypassing it with a emulator. You've been very helpful, thank you!

[3002 tii]

I used a resistor when I swapped to bucket seats and haven't had issues since.

FYI if you are going to go with coding, may as well get other features coded as well (TPMS delete would be high on my list).

[rlubocki]

Thank you for great advice, are here any good aftermarket ODB 2 readers/programmers?

[StickMon]

Yes.