Passenger airbag works 50%

If I could get that passenger airbag light to not light up, even only 50% of the time, I would be a happy man.

 

Weight related? Can you find a couple sacks of potatoes and just keep adding sacks and then potatoes in a binary search type operation until you can add a couple potatoes and have it work vs. remove a few potatoes and have it not work?

Sitting on the edge of the seat vs. the actual seat bottom?

It could be a simple problem like the weight sensor being broken or having intermittent contact as well. In that case a visual inspection might be beneficial.

Of course there can be lots of silly reasons too. Are you perhaps using a seatbelt extender? The car only senses the occupant weight upon the buckling of the seatbelt to the car side. So if you have an extender and it is never unplugged from the car part (meaning you unbuckle from the extender to seatbelt itself vs. unbuckling from the extender to the receptacle with the eject button) then it won't recalculate a passenger occupant.

On those same lines, have you had any aftermarket somethings installed? Aftermarket amplifier or something where they used the seat belt ground bolt as a system ground? That is very common in under the seat installations because it is a good ground. But that may effect it too.

Next time it does happen make sure you notice the seat belt indicator. If it is saying no belt is plugged in, that's a problem that would cause these symptoms but is more related to the seat belt than the weight sensor. And you shouldn't have to unbuckle and get out. Just unbuckle and rebuckle.

 

Also visually check there is nothing under the seat. Something like a sippy cup that rolled under the seat could support enough weight to throw off the sensor. The car does decide to not activate the airbag with light occupants. The car classifies the passenger as a child if they weigh less than 36kg and then turns off the airbag and pretensioning seatbelts. If you weigh more than 54kg, then it classifies you as a larger adult male and increases the inflation force of the airbag to slow the greater mass and retains pretensioner activation.

Also make sure the seat isn't leaning on something, like all the way back on the back seat or the passenger is propping themselves up without using the seat like leaning aggressively against an armrest or squatting with most weight on their feet.

 

How heavy is your passenger, a girl?? In the U.S. i believe it's supposed to come on when around 100lbs.

As far as warranty, the airbag safety system should have nothing to do with the factory or any other warranty you purchased. Some safety items, emissions, and hybrid battery all have longer federally mandated warranties which toyota must cover.

If you feel it's a problem, i would call the NHTSA and file a formal complaint. This is not like a typical repair item where they have to replicate it before they can fix it. It's a safety issue, and it's clearly a problem with the seat or harness, they should replace and see if it comes back again. Toyota just payed out over a billion dollars for knowing about a safety problem and trying to hide it. I'm sure they don't want to do that again. Also GM has to shell out over $300million to fix ignitions on cars because the car would shut off and the airbag wouldn't come on. I would take it to the NHTSA, if there's a supplier issue with the seat switch or something, i'm sure toyota will want the seat and or switch back to investigate.



Actually nevermind, there is already a recall on your problem:

 

Here is the customer notification letter:
http://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/acms/cs/jaxrs/download/doc/UCM436475/RCONL-13V014-0123.pdf

Even if your car isn't part of the recall which related to seat covers and accessories. This does show that there's a calibration procedure and there's a way to calibrate the seat at the dealer.

 

Any Toyota dealership with a Techstream can calibrate the sensor. It is not something you can do yourself unfortunately.

Do you have anything aftermarket on your car, or do you have any options that don't line up with the fresh-off-the-boat options that they come with?

Dealers sometimes install aftermarket leather onto models that shouldn't have them. Or sometimes people do just because they can. Generally the weight sensor wire is unplugged and then requires a recalibration generally. Do you have leather seats? Do you have an "upgraded" sound system? Anything been done in that area?

 

Dealerships are not owned by Toyota, they are independent franchises. If you dislike your dealer, go somewhere else. Maybe you can find a competent one and report the other to Toyota.

 

If your airbag doesn't go off and your passenger is seriously injured or dies, that's a huge lawsuit in toyota's and the dealerships hands because they refused to replace anything. I would think with the billion dollar payout toyota had recently, they would error on the side of caution and replace or recalibrate the sensor and/or harness, especially since you have a picture of it. That way, they at least made a reasonable attempt to fix the problem. But as it looks right now, they are erroring on the side of money, and trying not to spend any unless they really have to.

For most warranty items, it seems like you absolutely have to PROVE and have them witness the problem for it to exist, rather that it exists but only happens intermittently. Does your passenger happen to have a wide butt? I'm not sure where the sensor is, but it may be in the middle of the seat, and the weight of your passenger might be spread out enough to the sides that the sensor doesn't go off. Like they may weight 120lbs, but with the wide butt, the sensor only sees 80 lbs.

I asked my friend(service manager at nissan dealership), he said whenever there is a situation like yours where they have to deal with warranty decisions(remember, dealer won't do any work unless toyota is paying the bill), customers can usually get what they want by calling toyota directly, send them pictures, voice your safety concerns, and keep being a pest until they give in. They'll then contact the dealer directly and get them to perform the work. Being a severe safety item, i would think your case would have more priority to it, and they would probably want the sensor back for engineering to check it out.

One time he told me this lady brought in her armada with 32,000 miles on it and never changed the oil. The engine seized up, the tech saw that it had the original factory oil filter and she never came into buy any nissan oil filters or had her oil changed there, so they asked her when the last time she had the oil changed and she basically confessed. They refused the engine replacement, several weeks went by and she had called nissan corporate several times, complained, complained, complained. They finally called the dealership and told them to find a used low mileage engine to replace it with and nissan would honor it, even though everyone knew it wasn't a warranty item, and owner neglect.

 

When I sold Dodges, there was a woman who towed in a Chrysler 300 Hemi with the same issue. Nearly 50k miles and not a drop of new oil. She claimed the salesman never told her she had to change the oil so she didn't know. Chrysler did not replace it, though.

 

A picture is worth a thousand words, but a video is everything. I would seriously take a video of it with a passenger getting in the car. Call toyota and tell them you can send the video. They'll have no choice but to get it fixed, that's a serious lawsuit if they refuse and your passenger gets hurt or killed. All crash engineering designed into the car centers on the fact that the airbags work 100% of the time.

At the very very least, they should have inspected all the wiring and sensor and tried a calibration. Simply sitting on the seat to see if the lights goes on and off is not enough. If this dealer sold you the car, they should eat the cost of this checkout as a courtesy. That's how to you keep customers coming back, building that mutually beneficial relationship. This dealer just seems ultra stingy and greedy. I wouldn't buy a car for them if this is how they are over a very serious safety issue. I wouldn't let any of my family ride in the front if i can't trust the airbag would go off.

You can haggle and buy a car anywhere, the only thing that sets a local dealer apart are location and SERVICE. If you have crappy service, then there isn't much incentive to buy from you when toyota dealerships are 45 mins apart.

Actually i would take the video and put it on youtube, and explain that the dealership refuses to fix this. Get as many hits as you can and direct toyota to the video. They'll fix it and ask you to take down the video. Make sure everything you say is factual and indisputable, no here-say or slander.

They seem to be on the "if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to see it, then it didn't really fall" camp.

 

I can sympathize with the dealer's desire to be able to reproduce the problem before he can fix it - otherwise, how can he know if he's really fixed it? I've had two jobs in different industries (neither of which is automotive) where reproduction of an issue is a critical requirement to be able to fix something. One of those jobs was actually performing warranty service on computers, where our shop was graded on how often somebody came back more than once before their problem was fixed. It's possible that if Toyota has a grading system like this, it could discourage a dealer from wanting to start troubleshooting without being able to reproduce it - otherwise, you might come back several times before it's really fixed, and his scores take a hit.

At the same time, if there's a calibration procedure, they should at least give it a shot.