So, I bought a GT3 seat for track days. It doesn't have the side impact airbags so I got an airbag light on the dash once it was in and the car running. I expected this. The first things that seemed to fail was my Dension unit which died a few weeks after the seat swap. It was about five years old so I chalked it up to a warn out piece of tech.

A Few months go by and track season is over so I swap back to the stock standard seat. I expected the airbag dash light to go away on startup but it didn't. No biggie, it must need to be cleared by the dealer so I head in and have the dealer reset it. No more light.

Now the horn doesn't honk. It beeps if I try and lock the doors with the hood open so the actual horn works.

I guess my question is, would disconnecting the battery reset everything or should I make another trip to the dealer to see if a re-boot will sort things out.
Someone mentioned a Clock Spring Failure but I'm hoping that's not the case.

Any advice?

-Mark

 

Hi Mark,

oh man that sucks!
I did the same when I had a Boxster with the only side effect that I had to re-set the airbag light with my Durametric after swapping the stock seats back in.
I really think that these incidents are unrelated and you just have two electrical parts die on you.
Try disconnecting the battery, leave it disconnected for a couple of minutes. I don't think it can make anything worse.

 

OK, so new development. I have a code reader app on my iPhone. I decided to see what it says. I go out, plug in my OBD2 port reader and start the car. No errors but that doesn't mean much as it's just a phone app. Anyway, I press the horn ring and it honks. Just once and then nothing. I shut down locked it and then got back in and restarted it. Nothing.

 

By chance when you switch seats do keep the car key out of the cabin? Do you disconnect the battery before removing the seats? If not this most likely is the reason for the airbag light. For now i would do the "disconnect the battery" trick. That should take care of the airbag light. As for the horn....it could be the clock spring. On my old 996 the horn would beep going over bumps. Does your horn do this?

 

The Key was sitting on the work bench when I did the swap. I'm thinking now that it's either the Clock spring, which seems unlikely since I didn't remove the steering wheel, or perhaps I've been driving around with one horn for awhile now and the second one is on the fritz. It could also just be a bad connection.

 

Problem solved! I disconnected the battery for 20 minutes and then reconnected and let it sit over night. The next morning I got PASM & PSM errors which cleared up after a few minutes of driving and the horn also worked. I guess the ECU just needed a re-boot.

 

I put in some GT3 seats in my my C2S and sure enough got the air bag light. Idk if the indi had installed the seats with the battery unpluged or not. I also had a indi try to reset it with a computer and that didnt work ether so i heard the only person that has the computer to shut off the airbag light is the dealer. Now if i were to try and disconnect the battery would anything bad happen? Which terminal do you guys disconnect possitive or negitive or both ?

 

I think the issue is that the GT3 seats don't have the side airbags. that's why you get an error. The dealer is probably able to go in and specify deactivation of that specific system. Disconnecting the battery won't help because you're still missing the airbag. In my case, I swapped back to the standard seat and had the code cleared once the airbags were in place.

 

Gotcha thanks for the info. Glad yours worked out

 

Me Too! And I disconnected the negative terminal. It wreaks havoc on all of the systems so I wouldn't do it unless you need to.

 

[QUOTE="Hella-Buggin';4229723"]Me Too! And I disconnected the negative terminal. It wreaks havoc on all of the systems so I wouldn't do it unless you need to.[/QUOTE

Lol ill pass on disconnecting the battery then