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jrggino

Active Member
Joined
Jan 2, 2008
Messages
91
Hi all I posted in this section and the electronics section, I was surprised not to have any one come back with anything with regards srs front passenger air bag deactivation, for a child seat. I Know there must be a solution without going to a main stich up dealer. Just you guy's know just about everthing about evertything merc. Does anyone know anything about the circuit! Can I isolate the passeger side, is it a seperate stand alone or part of the main management system!!!

Gino
 
Hello


Why does the seat have to be in the front first off?

I had a BMW 330 convertible before my current car and was stuggling with the car seat in the back. I asked about getting the Airbag deactivated and at first Mr BMW said yes. However when I rang them to check they would not. If they switch it off and I give someone a lift and crash...no airbag deploys and they get the blame...


In the end I changed the car as it was useless with a little one..


I think however if you really must put seat in the front then you can buy off flea bay the transponder key which is basically built into Mercedes child seats and switches the airbag off.

From memory these are around £100. Check however that this will work with your car as I don't know.
 
On ebay you can buy the transponders on there own which you can fit on you baby seat or fix them to the underside of your seat.
 
Is the safety of your child worth the risk of a few pennies? :confused:

Sure, you might be able to buy some stuff on e-bay that claims to work. What if it does not when it matters?

I'm also not too sure that a seat from a dealer would be necessarily much more expensive. I always smile when I see bonnet stars or other stuff on ebay for prices higher than the new, genuine item from the dealer...
 
I'm also not too sure that a seat from a dealer would be necessarily much more expensive. .

They are believe me!

Having just found out that I need to go baby seat shopping again, I am at least relieved that I can avoid the stealers and visit Mothercare.
 
Your childs life Vs something off e bay that might work, No brainer :crazy:

Safest place for kids in the back behind the front seat passenger proven time and time again by so many research institutes and manufacturers.
 
David,

For our little one we used the MaxiCosi Cab seat and seat bases, brilliant bit of kit. Leave the base in the car attached to seatbelt / isofix if you have them. Get back to car clip seat from pram and simply click into base. No seatbelts to phaff with or anything. Had one in each car very handy.

Now our little one is bigger we went for the Maxi Cosi Tobi, again one in each car (I wanted the recaro purely on looks but this wins in tests...) Also another handy feature the seatbelts when open stay in the spung open position. Amazed no other seat offered this. Again anything to make your life easy, raining and a baby thats crying / fighting you its a lot easier to get them in and fasten them to the seat without phaffing with the harness. Not cheap at £180 each but as mentioned what price saftey??? They also only last up to about 3 but again because of that they are the strongest safest at what they do. Also Mrs Powell will love the colour range.... I'm boring and went for Penguine to match the car, Mrs A210 went for Lily pink.... :)


Mini A210 on her first outing with it....


DSCF6797.jpg
 
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Does look good. I am keen to go down a dedicated baby seat route this time. Last time we had a fancy three wheeler system, and every part of it was so heavy that it was virtualy unusuable. I had a W210 at the time, and even when we changed it we continues to use the MB seat which sadly I gave away.

We are also looking at a new seat for our 3.5 year old. We have a britax booster seat with highback in my car, which is not particuarly comfortable in my car, where she rarely travels, but need a more comfortable soloution for the family car.
 
jrggino.
I think your car is too old to have the baby seat sensor, in which case you have three options:
1. fit the seat into the rear.
2. unplug the yellow connector under the seat, but this will disable all the SRS system.
3. Disconnect the passenger airbag and fit a resistor in the connector to fool the SRS system.
I suppose you could rig up a key switch to disable the airbag and divert to a resistor and illuminate a tell tale.
 
I can't believe you are penny pinching where the safety of your child is at stake!!

I would sell my last possesion to cover the (possibly) more expensive but cast iron safe dealer solution.
 
Guys sorry if I give the wrong impression, Not Penny pinching at all. The baby will now travel in the rear as i can see there is no easy fix. I know honda had a solution they fitted a switch for a friend. This is more or less what I wanted to know. Basically Dieselman summed it up for me. Thanks DM . I will just have to stop the car and get out to deal with problems. Still they to grow up, problem soloved lol.
Thanks for all your imputs. There is no fix just buy a newer car, but until then he is in the back. Thanks All
Gino
 
I don't think that using a non MB Car seat is penny pinching. I suspect that they are made by the same people, and would tend to think the specialist suppliers such as Britax are possibly safer anyway being more expert in the area.
 
I don't think that using a non MB Car seat is penny pinching. I suspect that they are made by the same people, and would tend to think the specialist suppliers such as Britax are possibly safer anyway being more expert in the area.

My comment re penny pinching was more to do with disabling the sensor circuit etc and using ebay for safety critical items..

Regarding seats you are almost certainly correct. MB don't make their own seats! But then again anything they endorse must be of the highest quality and compatibility, just think of the possible litigation if things went wrong!
 
Re: comments about the possibly dubious quality of ebay transponders- this is easy to check as cars with the potenial to deactivate front airbag with a transponder have an 'airbag off' warning light on the front dash, so there should not be any uncertainty over whether the airbag will go off or not.
As to the amount one spends on a child's safety, I agree that a childs safety is paramount, but there is no point being a mug! MB charges twice as much for an old model Britax car seat compared to the high street & then just has a different (dated looking, imho) fabric cover put on it. I saved over £150 pounds on a latest/better specced Britax model which has better safety. I did not feel I was short changing my sons safety!
 
Re: comments about the possibly dubious quality of ebay transponders- this is easy to check as cars with the potenial to deactivate front airbag with a transponder have an 'airbag off' warning light on the front dash, so there should not be any uncertainty over whether the airbag will go off or not.

Thats not quite 100% failsafe. MB had a bunch of car seats (one design of the baby rock-a-top) which they recalled and re-designed the sensor layout - what was hapenning was the seat was moving slightly and sensor going out of range.
I suspect that the issue that then gave was if car was stalled or off/on like at a petrol station, it is unlikely the lamp would have been checked.

I love the auto-sensor thing. We also have a BMW and that has a keyswitch, we're very good at making sure airbag is off if child seat in front (all 7 seats needed for school run), but not so good at turning the airbag back on again

Almost all UK spec mercs (since the mechanism was available) have had the sensors in the car seat. Apart from the 07 ML (and probably some other 07 cars) where they dropped it from the standard build and UK didn't put it back on as standard on UK cars for 6 months. To add confusion the cars still had the airbag off light, which still lit up briefly as you started etc. You only knew by looing at the sticker on the end of the dash, or the datacard.

My 07 ML came without it, and to add it in theory you need a new airbag control module as once coded it is locked. I added it but used factory mode Star Diagnosis to change the setting to match another car which did the job (and then added it to the datacard so that any future owner wouldnt get a wrongly coded airbag module if it was ever replaced - although of course it was flagging up that the sensor was the wrong type until coded correctly for the sensor). Adding it meant replacing the occupancy sensor mat in the seat for one with occupancy setting and AKSE

Richard
 
I bow to your greater technical knowledge Richard!
Surely the airbag off light will stay illuminated with the correct sensor/receiver & transponder in place & hence if there is no receiver fitted, then the light will not stay illuminated, as it would do with a correct transponder & receiver?
ie if the light goes out, there is either a faulty transponder or no sensor in place?

Thats not quite 100% failsafe. MB had a bunch of car seats (one design of the baby rock-a-top) which they recalled and re-designed the sensor layout - what was hapenning was the seat was moving slightly and sensor going out of range.
I suspect that the issue that then gave was if car was stalled or off/on like at a petrol station, it is unlikely the lamp would have been checked.

I love the auto-sensor thing. We also have a BMW and that has a keyswitch, we're very good at making sure airbag is off if child seat in front (all 7 seats needed for school run), but not so good at turning the airbag back on again

Almost all UK spec mercs (since the mechanism was available) have had the sensors in the car seat. Apart from the 07 ML (and probably some other 07 cars) where they dropped it from the standard build and UK didn't put it back on as standard on UK cars for 6 months. To add confusion the cars still had the airbag off light, which still lit up briefly as you started etc. You only knew by looing at the sticker on the end of the dash, or the datacard.

My 07 ML came without it, and to add it in theory you need a new airbag control module as once coded it is locked. I added it but used factory mode Star Diagnosis to change the setting to match another car which did the job (and then added it to the datacard so that any future owner wouldnt get a wrongly coded airbag module if it was ever replaced - although of course it was flagging up that the sensor was the wrong type until coded correctly for the sensor). Adding it meant replacing the occupancy sensor mat in the seat for one with occupancy setting and AKSE

Richard
 
yes mercedes seats are made by good quality manufacturers....

BUT there are safer seats available that are non-MB branded. Go to the which? guides to see how the seats stack up in the polls. just because they are good quality seats doesnt mean they produce the best results in a crash
 

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