mornin' all. Vec C repair 'project'?

[evocarlos]

Ref seat belt light: did some searching on here (great forum btw) and found a thread with info from evocarlos about seats. Poked around under mine and the passenger front has one connector plugged in, the rears have a purple connector from the seat but not connected to the car, the driver seat has two connectors both conneced. If I understood that thread correctly you can't plug seats with airbags in if your old ones didnt have airbags, and if the new ones don't and old ones did, that won't work either, so the yellow connector needs disconnecting to clear the seatbelt light. Is that right?

Not sure whether my old seats and new ones did/didn't have airbags. Should I go ahead and unplug the yellow connector on driver seat anyway? Do i need battery disconnected and if so, for how long?

Cheers lads.

i cant say 1st hand on the vec c but on the astra g the airbag ecu needs to be one thats programmed for sip and then have the crash sensors in the doors if the previous seats had no air bags than you can just unplug the yellow connectors and see if the light goes off

 

[rick]

Ok cool. I'll just get on and do it in a min. Gettin kiddies to bed. Does the airbag light need a tech 2 reset?

 

[evocarlos]

not normally if the faults cleared the light goes out unless its different on the vec c

 

[rick]

If I disconnect all connectors from all seats, the seatbelt light goes out but airbag stays lit. If I reconnect the brown (not the yellow) plug under driver seat the seatbelt light goes on again. So, seatbelt light is due to the driver side brown connector.

There are two wires in a 2 core cable, orange and orange with purple line. Without the seatbelt plugged in they are shorted together and the light is on. With the belt plugged in they are still shorted so must be a short in that cable. b*****d thing is hard to get at though. Can I prise open the seatbelt buckle without setting off any pretensioners? Short has to be in the buckle somewhere as the rest of the cable is insulated and not damaged as far as I can see.

 

[rushy]

@rushy you can fix that with and m8 bolt and 2 nuts like i did the plastic insert wears out on the dog leg
you can see the plastic tab broken in this pic on the white dog leg i cut the rest of the tabs off then fitted spring washers i think to make up the gaps and fitted the bolt
View attachment 39318
View attachment 39319 View attachment 39320

Spot on cheers m8, i'll take a looks in the daylight, its been like that for years, but it'd be nice to have it tight again.

 

[evocarlos]

If I disconnect all connectors from all seats, the seatbelt light goes out but airbag stays lit. If I reconnect the brown (not the yellow) plug under driver seat the seatbelt light goes on again. So, seatbelt light is due to the driver side brown connector.

There are two wires in a 2 core cable, orange and orange with purple line. Without the seatbelt plugged in they are shorted together and the light is on. With the belt plugged in they are still shorted so must be a short in that cable. b*****d thing is hard to get at though. Can I prise open the seatbelt buckle without setting off any pretensioners? Short has to be in the buckle somewhere as the rest of the cable is insulated and not damaged as far as I can see.

that i dont know mate
on the astra there plugs yellow for seat air bags and a smaller brown/black for belt pretensioner if either are unplugged on mine the airbag light comes on they have to show 3ohms in the airbag ecu
the seat belt warning light i dont know how that works

 

[evocarlos]

Spot on cheers m8, i'll take a looks in the daylight, its been like that for years, but it'd be nice to have it tight again.

np was part of the DIY short shifter i did in my build thread
linky
https://z22se.co.uk/threads/project...poly-bushs-astra-g.22133/page-31#post-1202907

 

[rushy]

Rick it sounds like you have the uber rare heated rear seat pads which will be the wires in the rears, the fronts will have heated pads as well which will show up as extra wires/contacts in the multi plug. All Vec C's have seat airbags, your light could be the drivers airbag. Thats an SRi steering wheel, it has HU buttons and Silver inserts but most police dont have these fitted so......the airbag may be miss matched, which would cause the airbag light. Some have one plug and some have two that connect to the CIM.

As for price, if mine was spot on (53 plate SRi) it would barely get £1000. Mods dont really get you anything else over stock price TBH, splitting tends to be the way to go with these to get your money back. I take it the engine is a 2.2? If so it may not have taken much hammer as they used the 3.2 V6 and 3.0CDTi in the pre facelift, the smaller engines were used for CID and training, thats the case up here in Yorkshire anyway. Be aware most things on a Vec C are already hard wired, but have to be switched on in the relevant ECU (the car has about 22 lol) Tech2 is best but Opcom can do most things. Sometimes a little extra loom is needed especially on ex police as they only fitted the minimum so Club spec.

 

[rick]

Thanks guys. Will check resistance tomorrow. The seat light was sometimes on, sometimes off but I think that was a dodgy connection - it's pretty solid now that I've secured the terminals. Open circuit gives >3ohms so would turn it off if poor wiring.

If they're done on resistance it must be supposed to buzz through on a meter. Maybe that's not root causes then. Will measure resistance and let u know.

Ref sale prices, seems silly to spend 200 quid on timing chains if it's only worth 1k as a beautiful example. Now thinking a pump seal and fix airbag/seat light, run out the mot and sell on or break it for spares. Shame really as is pretty solid and roomy. Might just run her till she dies as the missus likes it.

 

[Matt]

Depends what it's worth to you though. Doing the chains should mean another 10 years out of the engine.

 

[rick]

Is there a way to test whether it needs new chains? No rattles or anything so might have been done before but I wouldn't know how to tell. I know what a bad chain sounds like, but what does one look like?

Free cash at the minute really ought to go into the zaffy as that's depreciating more by the day. the vectra ain't gonna be worth much less over next 6 months