Taking out passengers seat (permanently) and wonder about airbag light

GillyWI · May 14, 2020

Hi all, new guy here. Helping my brother in law, I guided him in the purchase of a 2016 2500HD WT standard cab, for camping. He is retired and travels around with a slide in. Not married, just a man and his truck. If I would have thought this through, maybe I would have waited until I could find a double cab (he needs the long box as a minimum tho, and was thinking keep it short, and he did agree to all this). So he carries a small generator. It is a gas powered but small enough to carry, plastic body around the whole thing and doesn't stink of gas. What he did on the prior truck is take out the passengers seat (both trucks are like that split bench with the armrest part in the middle). So he is kinda like we're gonna do the same thing. Fine up until I realized there is an airbag in the backrest bolster, I'm sure you know what I mean, and what I'm thinking. Oh crap, airbag light and warnings going off. So wonder if anyone has a suggestion on overcoming the warning lights, is there something I can jump or reprogram or anything? Or yank out a bulb? I suppose it's going to have more than a light, like warning messages in the cluster, but I don't know.

Gilly from Wisconsin

MikeNH · May 16, 2020

You can't pull a bulb, the system is far more complex than that. The only thing that *might* work is finding out the resistance of the side airbag module and wire in a resistor. But be aware that the reference voltage a multimeter sends out can deploy an airbag so you'll need a shop manual or something to find that data.

GillyWI · May 16, 2020

I was wondering more about the DIC messages. I did remove the seat today. The red indicator, my brother in law joked, is a lot small than the 06 Sierra 1500 the 25HD replaced, lol. He can live with it. The DIC message can be cleared for a trip with a push off the reset button on the cluster, and he can live with that as well. Thanks for the reply. I drive a 17 Colorado Z71 long box crew cab myself. Bowtie till I die!

Edited May 16, 2020 by GillyWI
Typo

kickass audio · May 16, 2020

I think it will still set a service airbag code since it can't read the status of the airbags in the seat for curtain bags. You could remove the seat and with it totally disconnected (I also recommend unplugging the wires going to the airbags themselves too so you don't run the risk of blowing them up and hurting yourself) but put the removed seat down and measure the resistance of the pressure switch at the bottom front of the seat. Next, have someone sit in the seat that is heavy enough to trigger the pressure switch to engage and see what that reading is. As long as you have a difference in your reading you will just need to use the resistance of your first reading when the seat is unoccupied and your truck may think the seat is empty and keep the airbag off. Now that is not to say it will keep the airbags from deploying but still run a self test every ignition cycle to look for the seat airbag and if it fails to find the airbag module it would set the airbag light and code in memory.