Semi-permanently remove rear seats

[jtozier]

We are headed on a month road trip and I am in the process of building a sleeping platform and storage in the rear. I pulled the rear seats out last night thinking I would just unplug the seat heaters. It looks like however one of the plugs may have been the rear airbag. Now the air bag warning light is on, does this mean the rear airbags wont go on in a crash? Is there a way to disable just the rear and have the light off?

[gtg196w]

I'm not sure, but I think the airbag light is going off for the seatbelt plug... no idea what this means for the front airbags. I asked a buddy who was a tech at a dealer, and he had no clue... soooo... I would try to remove the seatbelt from the seat and somehow still have the seatbelt connections intact without the seat.

[jtozier]

I'm not sure, but I think the airbag light is going off for the seatbelt plug... no idea what this means for the front airbags. I asked a buddy who was a tech at a dealer, and he had no clue... soooo... I would try to remove the seatbelt from the seat and somehow still have the seatbelt connections intact without the seat.

The seat belts female ends did not have a sensor attached. They were just bolted to the metal base below the rear seat. I have left the two rear side seat belts in the vehicle. The bottom of the seat had some connections and the upper section had two connections. One was yellow going to the upper part of the rear seat which I am thinking this may have been the airbag one?

[m_haiser]

yup yellow is srs/airbags

[Jtozier9]

yup yellow is srs/airbags

So did that disable the rear side curtain airbags? I am wondering if I need to put the seats back in or just clear the code with vag-com.

[m_haiser]

you wont be able to clear the code if the srs system recognizes the seats aren't there/there is a fault in the system. those airbags are most likely disabled

[rollerton]

Actually, the way it's designed NONE of the airbags will work if one is faulty or unplugged. During engineering It's crash tested and certified with all the components in working order, so when one part fails it is all disabled to keep the integrity of the safety system.
I've never tested it, but that's what Audi says. There is some valid coding the module will accept to disable certain airbags, but in my experience the light still comes on and you get an 'incorrectly coded' error. So don't know what to say about that.

[jtozier]

Actually, the way it's designed NONE of the airbags will work if one is faulty or unplugged. During engineering It's crash tested and certified with all the components in working order, so when one part fails it is all disabled to keep the integrity of the safety system.
I've never tested it, but that's what Audi says. There is some valid coding the module will accept to disable certain airbags, but in my experience the light still comes on and you get an 'incorrectly coded' error. So don't know what to say about that.

Well it looks the seats are going back in. At least I was able to clean under the seats? Wawa

[jbain2]

On a related note, I pulled up my rear bench and noticed the airbag plug was disconnected. Plugged it in and got the airbag light on my cluster. Unplugged it and the light went away. The car is new to me but is it possible this was coded out or something along those lines?


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[chris86vw]

Just put a resistor in, not sure which one is needed for this but I've done it both for front seat to swap to carbon fixed buckets and for putting in an aftermarket steering wheel on two different cars.

And front airbags SHOULD work with something like the rear seat missing. I'm not sure it is legal to allow the non mandatory side airbag system to disable to mandatory front airbags. There are faults that will disable it, not entirely sure this is one of them.

[rollerton]

And front airbags SHOULD work with something like the rear seat missing. I'm not sure it is legal to allow the non mandatory side airbag system to disable to mandatory front airbags. There are faults that will disable it, not entirely sure this is one of them.

I think it's a DOT / legality thing. It's sort of like the brakes; if one ABS sensor is bad the whole *ABS* part of the system is disabled. It's because there is no safety testing or certification for each individual part of the system alone, or any testing done when any single part of the system isn't working. From the manufacturers point of view the 'air bag system' is only intended to work as a fully functioning system, even though they can deploy individually. I have only read of first hand experiences from one or two cases where a steering wheel airbag wasn't compatible so no airbags deployed. I'd also think that it'd be better for ANY of it to work, rather than none...bottom line is we wont know unless someone tries!

[chris86vw]

But side impact and front impact are two systems designed and tested to work separate from one another. So not necessarily designed to work as a full system even today many of these different side systems are optional, so they have to be able to work separate from one another.


B6 a4s had a problem/recall with the connection under the seat for the thorax airbag in the seat itself. Had that disabled the front system Audi would have been required to tell people to tow the cars in and from what I remember they didn't.

Also a fault could be a bad seat belt is inserted switch in some vehicles. If a system doesn't know if a seatbelt is in use it sure as hell better default to deploying the airbag. And I think if an occupancy sensor fails the default is also deploy.


I've heard both ways it disables, it doesn't disable.. airbags are required as the passive restraint system and are from that law not supposed to be easily disabled. A simple fault disabling it would potentially violate that. So legally I don't think the Dot would said it must disable.

But like you said and a friend also recently said on the topic.. no one wants to test it :)