Zoom car seat buckle help

[Grizzly]

I'm not sure if this is the part you already have, or the part you need. This one was installed in my car when I bought it.

A guy here on the forum really needed one, so I took it out of my car for him.

I gave it to him for free.

I mailed it to him and covered the postage for him.

Then I had to take my car to the dealership and bribe a guy to have my airbag light turned off...

The guy never even bothered to send me an email saying thanks.

Wish I still had it. I'd send it to you instead.

[cplus]

Thanks for the picture, this should get me off to a good start though the notched end may be a little tricky. I'll give it a go this weekend and let you know how I make out.

[Tool Pants]

A long time ago there was a guy on German ebay who was making them.

Others have used a 944 buckle and cut a slot in it.

[cplus]

In case this is useful to anyone else, here's some information on fabricating a buckle that can be used with the airbag deactivation bar. Since Tool Pants said some people had luck with 944 buckles, I called Parts Heaven and bought one. I guess they just the buckle off an old lap belt, at least that what it looked like when I got it. The cost was under $25, including shipping.

Using the images as a guide, I made a small notch in the tongue. The notch is 5mm, flairing to abou 8mm at the tip. But the buckle was a few mm too wide, so I filed it down to 22mm. Now the buckle would slide in the latch, but wouldn't actually lock into place. I made up a duplicate out of aluminum stock and found that the tongue would need to be about 38-40 mm long in order to lock, but the 944 buckle was shorter (probably 38 mm). So I filed back some of the plastic-covered base to make the tongue the correct length.

Once it was the correct width and length, the buckle slotted in with a solid "click." I started the car and the airbag light flashed for 60 seconds, then went off. Just as it should.

Here's a pic and an outline with some measurements.

[ukchris]

You can also if you so chose replicate the whole mechanism with a switch and a couple of resistors. All that is inside the buckle is a switch that changed the resistance by cutting out a resistor once the buckle is inserted, the car detects this change and deactivates the passenger airbag. Too test this theory I made a little switch box with the approprioate resisors in it, it seems to work fine. The nice thing is that the car diagnoses if the system is working and tells you so by flashing the airbag light for 60 seconds to show it has been deactivated. I have the circuit I made somewhere if anyone is interested, $10 in bits from radioshack and it was complete.

The only tricky bit is getting the connector for under the seats, I managed to get one but it is an awkward part to get hold of. You could of course just cut the connector off and replace it with a more common one or splice in to the wires.

Chris.

[ukchris]

Grizzly,

I thought I'd try drawing this up, if we can get it right there are waterjet cutting places that could probably make them to order, I know a guy who could cut it out of acrylic fairly cheap which would probably work too. In theory if you print this PDF it should come out at actual size, could you line up your buckle and see how it compares? A picture of the printout with your buckle alongside would help too if that's viable.

Chris.

[cplus]

Printing at 8.5 x 11 isn't a full-size image so I can't compare them, but the shape is correct. I will say the "wings" are vestigal from my buckle being a lap belt in its earlier life, they can probably be eliminated resulting in a more streamlined design. BTW, the tongue is 3mm thick if you're going to have some made up.

Also, I'm not sure if the buckle can be acrylic; it may need to be metallic if the receptacle is anything more than a simple mechanical catch-activated switch. (I.e., if it's magnetic or passes any kind of current through the buckle.) My guess is that a non-metalic buckle will work but I really don't know.