seat swap from seat with air bags to those without and the annoying air bag light

[Joey P]

1999 ford explorer Eddie Bauer with leather seats with the air bags near the headrest. Seats are worn out and i always loved the seats in my sport trac so I went and found some front cloth seats from an 01 sport. The swap was easy and took no time. Maybe 2 hours. The sport seats even had the little yellow plug to plug the air bag harness in. Start truck up, and air bag light with Code 36 having to do with seat air bags. I figured this would happen but how do I fix it? No way am I going to swap the air bag over from the old leather seats. The plug on the 'new' sport seats appears to be a resistor of some sort, do I need to find a resistor from some 1999 explorer seats that didn't have the seat airbags option? Do I need to replace the air bag module from my truck from the 01 sport? I also read somewhere about using a resistor on the plug to achieve the right resistance but cannot find anything about it to confirm this. Thanks for any advice on how to fix this.

 

[Joey P]

Bump. Went and picked up some resistors in the junkyard off of a 99 4 door without seat airbags and plugged those in, but I still get the airbag light, so this was not what I needed.

 

[budwich]

me thinks you might have to clean your connections...

 

[Joey P]

Thanks, but i believe the issue is more having to do with the fact that I have new seats without side airbags and the old seats had them. I need to fool the computer into thinking I still have the side airbags. It must read a different resistance than the stock resistors bring.