Airbag light
 

Driving in to work today I noticed the airbag light is lit (fully, not partially). I'm an starting a trip for 4 days, and go to Road America the day after I get back. Could somebody please check a 986 Owner's Manual and post what it says about that light. I'm afraid it could deploy suddenly.

Yesterday I put my Recaro SPG XL in again (mounted to floor) and my harness in. I suspect that I put the wiring harness jack for the seatbelt/airbag in incorrectly. I will not have time to fix it before driving up to Road America, and want to make sure it's not going to deploy for the wrong reason. I'm okay with it being disabled until I can get to it, especially with the harness on the track.

you unpluged the seat with the battery still connected. The airbag light can be on without any issues, aside from the question that if you get in a wreck will it deploy.

The only fix is to take it to the dealer and have them reset the brain with the porsche computer. If you are good with them they should do it for free.

The Airbag Light can be on just because you Unplug and Replug the Seatbelt Receptacle, or it can be on because the seat you removed had Integrated AirBag or Weight Sensor (my 987 have those, I don't know for 996, probably not)

When I replaced the seat in my 06 Boxster S for the GT3 Seat I needed to tell the car to ignore the Weight Sentor and the Thorax Airbag in the seat because the GT3 seat don't have any..

If you like to be aware of what happen with your car and are a little on the DIY side, get yourself a Durametric, you'll be able to see exactly what's happening in your car's Brain, you'll be able to easily Turn off (Reset) that light just like the dealer would do it, and you'll even be able to manually disable some airbag (for track purpose), and you'll be glad to be able to disable the 'ding' sound when your seatbelt is not on (witch will prevent the ding-ding-ding when you got the racing harness on because the factory seatbelt is not buckled up), and even put it back on for street driving.. :)

I have one and I never regreted the investment..

the 986 ( at least up to 2002 that I know of) does not have a weight sensor for the airbags. I believe that started in 06.
From my understanding, because this happened to me, a durametric would not reset the light-only a PTS2 could do it.

Yes you can reset an airbag light with Durametric, this screen shot will show you;

http://www.durametric.com/porschereadcodes.aspx

Thanks for the info guys. Whether the Durametric will clear the error or not is moot as that's not in the budget right now.

Check around, I'm sure you can find someone with a durametric cable near your place who will be glad to help you out for a few beers :)