Follow-up and conclusion, hopefully
 

I've had the little resistor from somewhere in eastern Europe sitting in my parts pile for many weeks. Its supposed to emulate a butt in the pax seat, I'm guessing, which will allow the airbag to fire regardless of what size, or if any butt is in the seat.

I was in my storage space yesterday and grabbled the pigtail from the OE seats that I replaced with the facelifted comfort seats. Even though these facelifted seats are much nicer and have a lot more functionality than my OE seats, everything worked when I plugged them into my X5. So I reasoned that the car simply wasn't seeing what it needed to see from the occupancy sensor. Maybe it was code, wiring, a bad pad, or it needed the little box under the seat (that the facelifted occupancy system doesn't have), but whatever the reason I was getting the code and airbag guy in the cluster, my best bet was to put the OE seat wiring back under the new seat, along with the little box with the emulator plugged into it.

The occupancy sensor box has the emulator plugged into one side, and the cable to the bit yellow plug fits right into its designated spot once you pull the protective cover off the back of the plug, and pull the harness that came with the seats, out. I think they are identical harnesses in operation, although since the wire colors were different I figured I'd use the one that was on the seats I took out.
https://i.postimg.cc/7Z0s79J4/PXL-20...-182744667.jpg

I removed the plug assembly from the bracket, unplugged it, and then took the protective cover off the back, which covers all the individual plugs and wires coming from the seat systems. After that it was easy to swap the OE wire with the one that came with the "new" seat. I plugged in the little box, put it all back together, cleared the codes with my foxwell and so far, so good. No little airbag guy, and no SRS codes. Time will tell though. As I recall, it took a while for the light and code to pop after resetting it when I was troubleshooting. I cleaned it all up and snapped it into the plastic holder that is present the "new" seats, even though they don't have this little box.

Mixing ass detector will set abs code immediately. I think you're good to go.


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Hope so. Although it was easier than I thought to ignore that little red airbag dude in the cluster. Way easier than ignoring an SES light.

Update:
More work to do. Went over to pick my wife up at work and was happy not o see airbag guy on my cluster. She gets in the car and buckles up….airbag guy immediately comes back.

I’ll see what the codes are tomorrow, but it seems too coincidental that the tensioner would fail while I’m working on the occupancy issues. I probably need to dig into some wiring diagrams and see where these things intersect. Hopefully there will be some meaningful codes.

How cold where you are? Wife's e53 would air bag man from cold. It was in the module but the error was ass sensor related. When the car warmed up in the cabin power cycle cleared airbag man.


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Interesting…it finally cooled off here, but that just meant it was in the high 60s to low 70s yesterday. It was strange that as soon as her butt hit the seat, or the seatbelt clicked in (wasn’t looking at the cluster when she got in), the MRS guy appeared again. The pad isn’t connected to anything anymore, or so I think. Maybe there is a second connection for the facelifted occupancy mats that I missed.

I read the codes this morning too and was surprised to see the left front side airbag code had set. I’d been fighting this for a year…swapped the plug from the back door (plugs are no longer available), cleaned the connections, etc. but finally bought a new airbag. Fixed…or so I thought.

Once again, super strange that it popped as she got in the car. Maybe her closing the door jiggled something and caused a short.