Enlighten me: BMW airbag lights

Now that I have finally gotten my beautiful BMW Z3 exactly where I wanted it to be, it has rewarded me by illuminating its airbag light. From what I hear, this is fairly common.

At first, I suspected that it was due to the fact that my kid's unoccupied (and therefore unbelted) car seat was on the passenger's side, but, once removed, the light stayed on.

Also of note is the fact that it rained hard last night and some water got on the passenger's seat. Hmmm...

Is the remedy as simple as disconnecting the battery and cleaning all the connections? Do I need a fancy expensive tool to reset the light?

Help me GRM, you're my only hope...

Once the light is on it cannot be reset without a tool. See this Pelican article for more info. It can be caused by a number of things. There may be an actual fault in your case.

At this point you have a decision to make: do you want to buy a tool for the sole purpose of diagnosing and resetting the SRS light, or spend a little more for a full BMW diagnostic suite that can do that and more?

I bought that exact diag suite setup from that seller and was very, very happy with it. You can generally find a similar setup for sale if you wait and look for it. It may be more than you need, but it quite literally does everything the dealer can do and more, including low-level coding, ECU reflashes, etc in addition to high-level diagnostics. Very powerful.

Also check under the carpet for ground wired/plugs. The grounds for the seats all connect to a common connector that gets corroded and fails, setting off the light. Resetting isn't necessarily fixing, but that light is aggravating

It is probably the seat occupancy sensor has gone bad. There are a couple of bypass solutions that tell the system that it is occupied all the time. maybe a problem if you still have kids in car seats. I have the Peake SRS tool in my box at the hanger. I will ship it to you if want to try it.

On the ex's '97 M3, the passenger seat belt sensor was notorious for being flakey - and that was over 10 years ago when the car was 5 years old. She could reset it with a Peake tool in seconds flat. This was after having the dealer fix/replace it at least twice at $300+ a pop.

What they all said. I had a pass seat occupancy sensor go bad in my e36, and it wasn't bad to fix. I bought the Peake tool on this board from Pigeon, reset the light, then sold the tool on for what I paid for it.

In connection with your other post in confessions, if you are thinking of selling, please let me know or post it in the classifieds, my mom is looking to sell her MGTF for something more modern and useable, and a z3 is near the top of the list, and I know yours is sorted.

In reply to Sonic:

If I were getting an old, old car, it would probably be an MGTF. I was combing the ads a few weeks ago for one, though I'm not sure if that's my goal right now.

cdowd wrote: It is probably the seat occupancy sensor has gone bad. There are a couple of bypass solutions that tell the system that it is occupied all the time. maybe a problem if you still have kids in car seats. I have the Peake SRS tool in my box at the hanger. I will ship it to you if want to try it.

Thanks, I might want to take you up on that offer.

pointofdeparture wrote: At this point you have a decision to make: do you want to buy a tool for the sole purpose of diagnosing and resetting the SRS light, or spend a little more for a full BMW diagnostic suite that can do that and more? I bought that exact diag suite setup from that seller and was very, very happy with it. You can generally find a similar setup for sale if you wait and look for it. It may be more than you need, but it quite literally does everything the dealer can do and more, including low-level coding, ECU reflashes, etc in addition to high-level diagnostics. Very powerful.

That looks like it's just a laptop with the BMW service software installed and some cabling to hook the thing up to the BMW diagnostic port.

You can find the BMW ETK/TIS for the older cars (pre-2008) for free on various websites. Then you just need an old laptop and the cabling.

In reply to Harvey:

That's exactly what it is, but to get a Windows XP laptop with all the software loaded and configuration already done, guaranteed to work out of the box was worth it to me. I played around with some downloaded versions of the software and could never get them to work right, so I thought it was worthwhile.

FWIW when I sold my BMW I sold the laptop diag suite to a local CCA guy for $100 more than I paid, and he was happy to pay it, so it was totally worth it.

I can see how that could work out to be more convenient.

I'm just pointing out for those that want to DIY that if you have an old laptop you can download the software and make it work for free, though you obviously still need a laptop old enough to have a serial port and then find the cabling that works with that OBD2 to BMW diag adapter thing.

cdowd wrote: It is probably the seat occupancy sensor has gone bad. There are a couple of bypass solutions that tell the system that it is occupied all the time. maybe a problem if you still have kids in car seats. I have the Peake SRS tool in my box at the hanger. I will ship it to you if want to try it.

Once again, I appreciate the offer, but I went ahead and ordered the tool from Bavarian Autosport (free shipping today). I decided that it's probably the kind of tool that I'll want to own for at least as long as I own a BMW.

While this problem is annoying, having to buy the tool doesn't really bother me that much. It sounds like I have a squeaky clock spring on the steering wheel, and removing the airbag to fix that was going to activate the light anyway, so I was going to need this thing at some point anyway.

In reply to Woody:Sorry I'm too late on this. I highly recommend the following tool

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00WQUWV9K?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_s00

Its the Creator C310 diagnostic tool. Does a ton of diagnostics/resets for BMW cars and is dirt cheap for what it does.

In reply to eebasist:

Damn, pretty sure that I would have jumped all over that one...

Woody wrote:

cdowd wrote: It is probably the seat occupancy sensor has gone bad. There are a couple of bypass solutions that tell the system that it is occupied all the time. maybe a problem if you still have kids in car seats. I have the Peake SRS tool in my box at the hanger. I will ship it to you if want to try it.

It sounds like I have a squeaky clock spring on the steering wheel, and removing the airbag to fix that was going to activate the light anyway, so I was going to need this thing at some point anyway.

I had a "squeaky clock spring" on my E36. Turned out to actually be the column bearings. The fix was to drill a small hole in the column down by the floor and spray it with a lubricant. Went from the worst sound ever to completely gone and improved steering feel and effort 100%. I'd recommend once you have the steering wheel off to give the column a turn. If the noise is still there, you have the issue.

The proper fix is to replace the bearings, but I wasn't eager to remove the column.

eebasist wrote: In reply to Woody:Sorry I'm too late on this. I highly recommend the following tool http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00WQUWV9K?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_s00 Its the Creator C310 diagnostic tool. Does a ton of diagnostics/resets for BMW cars and is dirt cheap for what it does.

Thanks for that, gonna buy it for my wife's 2011 335i. Hate having to deal with the oil reset thing.