Swapping seat airbags when they have different plugs...

[S1monR]

Hello everyone,

I've been to the scrapper today and bought a new set of seats for my 2006 K12 Initia because the driver's seat base had broken, and because the Initia seats were pretty uncomfortable!

I've ended up with a set of seats from another 2006 car but it's got different airbag connectors to my original seats.



My car has the yellow plugs, but the new seats have a smaller brown one.

I've got both parts of the plug from the donor car so have a couple of options:

1. Either simply cut the yellow plugs off my car and solder in the brown alternatives, but are the airbags themselves compatible with my car?

Or

2. Remove the airbags themselves from my original seats and put them in the new seats.

Any insights available, please?

 

[S1monR]

In the end I decided to take my old seats apart and see how difficult it would be to simply swap the airbags from the old seats to the new ones. It was surprisingly easy and I would recommend this approach if you ever find yourself in this position. It's a simple case of releasing a couple of cable clips and then chasing the wire out of the base of the seat, unzipping the cover at the rear of the squab, releasing the rear of the cover from the channel at the bottom and then undoing two bolts and two nuts. You can then release the seat cover on the side with the airbag which gives you enough room to thread the wire up and withdraw the airbag from the seat.

Removing the original seats, swapping the airbags into the new seats and then bolting them into the car took about 2 hours this morning. After the job was done, I had to reset the airbag light which was flashing.

Here's how to do that: