Just picked up two MINT manual/airbag having 350z seats for $70 bucks (WOOT WOOT). Got the driver-side in with some struggle but am now having an airbag problem I haven't seen an answer to yet. The airbag light is obviously blinking (will do the resistor mod if I can't resolve it), and so I wanted to try to mate the body harness to the seat-airbag connector.

Pictures below.

SEAT connector

BODY connector

Is it possible to cut behind the seat connector and insert the wires into the body connector the same way you would a resistor? I'm mostly worried about 350Z's and G35's having different signals from the ECU to the airbag, and really don't feel like setting off a brand new seat airbag. If the signals are confirmed identical (very much an electrical newbie), is it possible to connect these two via some cutting/soldering/taping and still have a working side-impact airbag (not too chuffed without it, but I figure if I have it I may as well try)?

The car is a 2005 coupe, seats came from a 2006 350Z. Don't know if that changes anything about the wiring, but more information never hurt.

 

This is something that you definitely need to do a little more research on but you SHOULD be able to take the harness and cut it from your existing G35 seat and splice it in place of the harness from the 350Z seat.

Here are snippets of the two wiring diagrams, on the G35 the signal goes OUT (from the diagnostic control unit) on the yellow/red stripe wire and returns on the yellow green stripe wire.

On the 350Z the signal out is blue/green stripe and returns on the black/red wire.

You SHOULD be able to take the seat, cut the harnesses off, take the harness from your G35 seat and splice the 350Z blue/green onto the yellow/red G35 harness wire, then splice the 350z black/red to the yellow/green G35 harness wire.

The "signal" shouldn't matter at all, pretty much every airbag I've ever seen used 12v to trigger, it's not a serial link connection it's an "end-of-line-resistor" style system. As long as it's plugged in it sees the resistor at the airbag so it knows it's connected (pretty confident nissan uses the same resistors across the 350Z/G35 platform), when the diagnostic unit fire the airbag it's just a 12v pulse to light the ignitor which physically breaks the resistor as it explodes and the diagnostic unit knows the airbag fired successfully.

The only modifications should be to the seat harnesses, leave the chassis side of the harness alone.

 

I'm actually surprised they have different harnesses on them. Most of the 350Z stuff is a direct plug-n-play to the G35

 

I was hoping the plugs would be identical, but it wouldn't surprise me that crash regulations mandated a different airbag design for the two cars. Doesn't explain the wiring/plugs, but whatever.

I found plenty of stuff online on how to do the resistor mod, nothing either here or the 350Z forums on how to wire a 350Z seat and G35 body (or vice versa) together. As far as I've seen nobody (at least people posting) has done it yet, but my Google-fu is weak. I will report back, assuming I don't set off an airbag (definitely doing passenger side first...).

 

Just make sure the battery is disconnected first and pump the brakes to drain residual voltage. Also, the airbags only trigger if there's an event that makes the diagnostic unit think there was a crash on the side impact sensor.

 

New problem. The G35 chassis side plug has double yellow/red stripe plugs, the G35 seat plug has double all-yellows, and the 350Z seat has double all yellows. I'm guessing I need to match orientation of the wires from the plugs?

 

CHASSIS plug/wire

Only markings on G35 seat harness to airbag.

Similar markings on 350Z seat harness to airbag.

 

Update: had to go the resistor route as the wiring didn't match to what I was told and I didn't feel like cutting the chassis harness. Totally reversible, maybe I'll figure it out someday.

Now, the important part; it turns out that 2005 coupes have a weight bladder on the passenger seat (Z's didn't get that til 06+ I believe, can't find any information on G's). If you want to turn off the code (in diagnostic mode five blinks), you'll need to purchase/extract a module and the bladder itself and do the 350Z burrito trick.

There's a way to get the module/bladder out without damaging the seat (you WILL need a T50 torx bolt to remove the module from the bracket), but I had no plans to keep my trashed seat so I literally ripped the leather off. That combined with the resistor trick (I cut off the seat harness, soldered in a 2.2 ohm .5 watt resistor onto each one and just plugged them into the chassis harness, so perfectly reversible) should fix the light and enable all airbags but the seat ones; will report back once I have time to do the burrito.

 

Burrito trick works perfectly. Only small problem is stowing everything under the lower seat, but it's doable.

One more note I haven't seen anywhere is that you'll need to raiser the outer side of the passenger seat by over an inch and the outside of the driver side by less than an inch. I just used 50mm long bolts and a ****-ton of washers.

 

Hey! I have an 06 Sedan & was looking at doing the same thing as you are here. Were you able to get these in and everything working properly? Also would you mind telling me what the burrito trick is?

Thanks

 

I did disable the seat-airbags (couldn't figure out the wiring from G35 body to 350Z seat) and had to use washers/longer bolts to level out the seats, but aside from that it's good. Burrito trick is taking a weight-bladder (from my old passenger G seat) and zip-tying it into a burrito looking thing, thereby tricking the car into thinking someone is sitting on the seat (otherwise the airbag light keeps coming on).

It definitely works a lot better than the original seats for me, but eventually I plan to get legit aftermarket seats. For 75 bucks though, it was a no-brainer.