Different airbag connections - advice needed.

[Grey Area]

Hi guys, I'm swapping the door from my old c180 (w202) to my c230k (w202), the trouble is the c180 is 2000 and the c230 is 1998 and somewhere in that 2 year period mercedes decided to change the airbag connections that sit in the wiring loom under the door sill/kick plate.

Am I totally kidding myself that I could cut and re-solder the different connections on to each set of wires? I'm guessing that it'll be near impossible to strip out the complete set of wires for each car's door airbags and swap them?

Any advice would be much appreciated.

I've attached some photos of the different connections, the yellow one with blue wires is the newer c180 and the orange is the c230k.

 

[jamesfuller]

I wouldn't recommend you start cutting and soldering! You need to be very sure of yourself and get the lengths just right to keep the resistance the same. When BMW used to supply modification kits they used to supply there own crimp connectors as they where less of a variable than lots of different people soldering!
Can you not swap the airbag over along with the wiring to the good door?

 

[Grey Area]

Airbag unit is riveted (or some other undoable connection) to the door, presumably to stop people tinkering or stealing them. The plastic connections in the photos can be sort of dismantled to get to the component wires but even they have different crimp connectors on. I think my best bet is the very fiddly task of trying to remove those metal connection and then swapping them over.

 

[Grey Area]

UPDATE- And change of plan. Upon closer inspection the airbag unit can be unplugged, until now I was extremely unwilling to tamper with and unplug the wires running into the actual airbag box, but I did and I'm still alive!! More importantly so is the door/window/airbag etc Anyway, the serial numbers differ, but from what I can work out the model number of the actual airbag unit is the same and they look identical so I'm going to follow James' advice and swap the wiring out instead.

Regards...

 

[Grey Area]

Another question...
I swapped out the airbag wiring and put the door back on etc, but now I have an SRS warning light lit up. Would this be because I unplugged it and now it needs resetting or, more depressingly, is there now something wrong?