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Fitting a Seat Occupancy Mat Emulator and checking with INPA

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nfarmer
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Location: Worcestershire

Fitting a Seat Occupancy Mat Emulator and checking with INPA

Post by nfarmer » Tue Mar 03, 2015 4:48 pm

Not on my Z4 but the wifes E46 but the Z would be the same. We had the dreaded airbag light going on and off and when I checked with DIS/GT1 the error code indicated the seat occupancy mat was damaged (for a second time, the first was some 4/5 years ago).

Made some inquiries and the cost of replacement would have been about £120 (inc VAT) for the mat and about £150 fitting (local indy). I saw a couple of ads on ebay for Seat Occupancy Mat Emulator For BMW, (they are model specific so check it’s the correct one). Did some research and identified that while all emulators disable the airbag light, not all simulate the presence of a passenger in the seat, and if they don’t in case of an accident your car airbags might never deploy! Not a good idea, I contacted a couple of supplier and bought one from this ebay advert

. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Seat-Occupanc ... 2821&rt=nc.

I fitted it today and ran INPA to check the seat was appearing to be occupied and thought others would find the process of using INPA useful.
Firstly fitting it, while the instructions stated you don’t need to take the seat out unbolting it and tipping forward (after removing the headrest) made the job very quick and simple. You just need a 17mm socket.

When the job was done I connected my laptop to the car (I use a cable from Cable Shack who also supplied the software with a simplified installation program) and started INPA. Just click ‘OK’ on any error messages.

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Just press F5

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Keep pressing the down arrow on your keyboard until you see this

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Seat is shown as Occupied, you might need to clear the error codes just to finish the job.

Its obviously best the replace tme Mat as now the airbag will go off whether the seat is occupied or not so NO CHILDREN IN THAT SEAT EVER Good luck

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