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Airbag warning light

Spoilt22

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January 25, 2016
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City, State
Philadelphia Pennsylvania
Year, Model & Trim Level
2001 Ford Explorer Sport
Light came on the other day. Checked everything associated with it. No idea what it could be.
 



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I don't have any solutions or ideas here, but mine started lighting up last week, seems random, some days it's lit solid, some days it blinks, and others it doesn't light up at all.
 






Hook up a scanner and get the codes. That would be a good place to start. Also check the fuse under the hood.
 






When I bought the explorer, the dashboard light remained on
The problem was a loose fuse
 






Light came on the other day. Checked everything associated with it. No idea what it could be.

The air bag light should blink a pattern like 3-6 or 3-7 times. This indicates either the driver's side or passenger side seat. If this is what you're seeing, there is a yellow electrical plug on the bottom, center rear of the seat. It is actually plugged into a resistor. This plug sometimes gets pulled or kicked by rear seat passengers or by junk on the floor. Try pulling, pushing wiggling these plugs and see if the light goes off. I've had this happen several times.

I presume this plug was for side air bags, but I've never seen an Explorer with this option. Maybe the Limited's... ?
 






The air bag light should blink a pattern like 3-6 or 3-7 times. This indicates either the driver's side or passenger side seat. If this is what you're seeing, there is a yellow electrical plug on the bottom, center rear of the seat. It is actually plugged into a resistor. This plug sometimes gets pulled or kicked by rear seat passengers or by junk on the floor. Try pulling, pushing wiggling these plugs and see if the light goes off. I've had this happen several times.

I presume this plug was for side air bags, but I've never seen an Explorer with this option. Maybe the Limited's... ?

Hi koda2000 , I keep hearing about this yellow plug , I don't seem to have one , I bought the 99 EX and the front seats were replace , now I have the Airbag light on and the code is the driver side short something , I have clean it and still the light on,any one have a pic of this plug ?

Thank you in advance :)
 






I don't have a picture of the plug handy. It's not very large and it appears to have a matching yellow cap on it's end. This cap is the required resistor to keep the air bag light off. If your seats have been changed, whoever replaced them may have shoved the wire and plug under the carpet, as it emanates from a small slit in the carpeting. Hopefully they didn't clip the wire off or you'll need to find replacements at the salvage yard and solder them in.

What code is the air bag light flashing?

The yellow plastic plug has a molded hook on the end that allows it to snap onto the metal bar that runs across the rear bottom of the seats.

Here's a link with more info:
http://www.justanswer.com/ford/0uu15-2000-ford-explorer-code-36-air-bag-light-fix.html

I found this picture of the resistor on eBay:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-OEM-AIR...ash=item35e37ff40b:g:x8IAAOSwrklVTT39&vxp=mtr

Here's a picture of the wire with the resistor attached. Apparently this guy had a bad OE resistor and wired in one for Radio Shack.
DSC03521.jpg
 






I don't have a picture of the plug handy. It's not very large and it appears to have a matching yellow cap on it's end. This cap is the required resistor to keep the air bag light off. If your seats have been changed, whoever replaced them may have shoved the wire and plug under the carpet, as it emanates from a small slit in the carpeting. Hopefully they didn't clip the wire off or you'll need to find replacements at the salvage yard and solder them in.

What code is the air bag light flashing?

The yellow plastic plug has a molded hook on the end that allows it to snap onto the metal bar that runs across the rear bottom of the seats.

Here's a link with more info:
http://www.justanswer.com/ford/0uu15-2000-ford-explorer-code-36-air-bag-light-fix.html

I found this picture of the resistor on eBay:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-OEM-AIR...ash=item35e37ff40b:g:x8IAAOSwrklVTT39&vxp=mtr

Here's a picture of the wire with the resistor attached. Apparently this guy had a bad OE resistor and wired in one for Radio Shack.
DSC03521.jpg


Hmmm strange ,on my 99 explorer the plug to the latch is black with 2 black wires and flat , am I looking at the same thing ? the code I get is 36

Thank you koda2000
 






Hmmm strange ,on my 99 explorer the plug to the latch is black with 2 black wires and flat , am I looking at the same thing ? the code I get is 36

Thank you koda2000

Code 36 is driver's side seat IIRC. The wires on the seat belt latch have nothing to do with the air bag or the air bag light. The 2 black wires on the latch are for the seat belt reminder light. Did you feel around under the carpet for the side air bag wire? Most Ex's did not have side air bags, but they all had the wire for it, as it was unused the resistor was necessary to fool the air bag system into not turning on the air bag light.
 






Code 36 is driver's side seat IIRC. The wires on the seat belt latch have nothing to do with the air bag or the air bag light. The 2 black wires on the latch are for the seat belt reminder light. Did you feel around under the carpet for the side air bag wire? Most Ex's did not have side air bags, but they all had the wire for it, as it was unused the resistor was necessary to fool the air bag system into not turning on the air bag light.


Hmm , interesting I know I check under the carpet cuz I want to hook up the power seats and there were the 2 wire for the seat latch ! I guess I'll be doing some digging this week on 90 degrees and 100% humidity :)

Thank you again koda2000 !
 






Apologies..this a re-post from recent submission with additional details. I'm Code 3-6. My 00 Exp does not have those yellow connectors under both seats. They may have been removed previously by former owner and harness wires spliced together. Short of me scrounging around junk yards for these, are you aware of a air bag delete resistor hack I can try? Do you know if I can buy the resistor and solder it into a makeshift connector?

ExplRidr41

ExplRidr41
 






I know this is an old thread but it helped me and I wanted to add another datapoint.

I have a 1999 Explorer sport and was getting the 37 airbag code. Cleaning the contacts under the passenger seat didn't fix things, and neither did switching the dongles between driver and passenger. I figured the problem had to be the passenger pigtail or wiring, so decided to go ahead and free the resistor from the dongle and cut off the pigtail, then solder things together. Not much to lose. Luckily it worked. FWIW the issue was the pigtail didn't have connectivity from one of the wires to the pin.

The resistor value is 6.8 Ohms +/- 5%. This is pretty low, so probably any connector issue would cause a problem here.

PXL_20230530_041036853.jpg
 






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