Blinking Red Airbag Light

[binar01011]

Fellow Forum Members,
I decided to install new floor carpet in my 2001 Pathfinder. Therefore, to make the carpet installation more easy I decided to remove both the driver seat and the passenger seat. The two seats remained removed from my Pathfinder for 4 days because that is how long it took me to install the new carpet myself after I got home from work.

Long story short, I installed the two seats back onto my Pathfinder and made sure the connections were made as they were before removal. The unpleasant surprise is how after I started the ignition in my dash I now see a blinking RED light for the air bags. It just constantly blinks and does not turn off.

My guess is my Pathfinder still thinks the seats are still missing. How do I reset the airbag system so that my Pathfinder thinks the seats are back where they suppose to be? How can I make sure the airbags are back to working order once I figure out how to turn off the blinking RED airbag light?

If my guess is wrong, does the blinking RED airbag light mean I have seriously messed up my entire airbag system or just the side airbags embedded in the seats? Do I have to replace my airbags?

Any opinion or help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[atraudes]

Give these reset steps a go, courtesy of this site. I saw it in a few places so I think it's a generic Nissan procedure.

1. Turn the key from off to on.
2. Watch the airbag light closely. It will stay on for a few secs. and then as soon as it blinks off (the start of the flashing), turn the key off instantly.
3. Count to 5 (1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi . . . .)
4. Repeat steps 1-3 two more times until you have done the cycle three times.
5. Now turn the key on and watch the light. It will start blinking in a different, slower manner. This is diagnostic mode. You can watch this for a little while, no hurry.
6. Now turn the key off again, Count to 5 like in step 3 again, and turn back on. If the procedure worked, the airbag light will not be flashing.
If it does not work the first time, just repeat the steps again.

How did the new carpet turn out? How much was it and where did you get it from? The bad-idea tan in mine is naturally riddled with coffee stains and the like and I'd love to get it replaced.

[barnaclebob]

When you remove the seats unplug the battery before you unplug the airbag and it wont trip the airbag light. Its easiest to leave the battery hooked up until you unbolt the seats though so you can move them to get at the bolts.

[binar01011]

Atraudes and Barnaclebob,
Thanks for your postings. I got home late from work today so I could not try either of your suggestions. Hopefully, tomorrow I will have some time.

As for my carpeting project I have to say it turned out very well. It helps if you carefully pull out the old carpet and then use it as a pattern. I have to say it looks very good for the amount of money I paid for it which was only $30. The reason I got it for cheap is because I requested for a remnant piece of carpet that was left over from a job. Most carpet stores usually have remnant pieces. You just have to be lucky that the color you want is available as a remnant piece. In short, you save some money this way compared to buying brand new carpet off of a roll. I'm glad I did it, because my carpet like yours also had some coffee stains and other stains as well. Now it looks brand new.

As for Barnaclebob's suggestion, I wish I could have known that trick before I removed my two seats. I guess it's too late for me know because my Air Bag light is already blinking. So my guess is that disconnecting the battery at this point in time will not do anything.

Again thanks to all for the postings. I will update this thread to let everyone know if I have any success with the procedure Atraudes posted. Cheers to all.

[binar01011]

Give these reset steps a go, courtesy of this site. I saw it in a few places so I think it's a generic Nissan procedure.

1. Turn the key from off to on.
2. Watch the airbag light closely. It will stay on for a few secs. and then as soon as it blinks off (the start of the flashing), turn the key off instantly.
3. Count to 5 (1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi . . . .)
4. Repeat steps 1-3 two more times until you have done the cycle three times.
5. Now turn the key on and watch the light. It will start blinking in a different, slower manner. This is diagnostic mode. You can watch this for a little while, no hurry.
6. Now turn the key off again, Count to 5 like in step 3 again, and turn back on. If the procedure worked, the airbag light will not be flashing.
If it does not work the first time, just repeat the steps again.

How did the new carpet turn out? How much was it and where did you get it from? The bad-idea tan in mine is naturally riddled with coffee stains and the like and I'd love to get it replaced.

Atraudes,
I'm just reporting to everyone who is following this thread that the instructions you posted worked nicely. In fact, in my case it worked the very first time I tried it out. I followed each step exactly as written and at the end my blinking airbag light no longer blinks. I suggest to the Admin of this forum these steps should be included in a sticky titled "Pathfinder Common Repairs".

In short, thank you very much for sharing these instructions. I know if I would have taken it to my Nissan Dealer they would have charged me around $100 just to diagnose what the problem is and then who know how much more to actually fix it.

The only thing I'm wondering about is if the fix I performed using an ignition key sequence compares as being the same thing to connecting a code scanner and then using it to reset the airbag system by changing the code to a reset code? In other words how can I get confirmation my airbags are really on and ready to deploy in case of an accident? It's a rather perplexing question.

Thanks again for the instructions which performed flawlessly.

[Hawairish]

Nissan does a good job summing up the system in the FSM, btw, including procedures like these to clear and read codes. When the system is in the non-diagnostic mode, confirming the system is ready is just done using the same air bag light and monitoring its status at a given step (i.e., key in = light on for X seconds, then off).

The SRS and ECU systems and diagnostic procedures are separate, though. Unless it's the Nissan scanning system (CONSULT), it can't access the same sort of info that a generic code reader can. However, pretty much all of those systems have a non-CONSULT method (like what you tried) described in the FSM.

[atraudes]

Glad to hear it's sorted out! Hawairish is right; if it's not telling you something's wrong, it's safe to assume everything is well. The monitoring systems are fairly overzealous so you're more likely to get a false positive.

[Serdriver]

Just used this process this morning on. 2001.5 Pathfinder and it worked, thanks!
At first I got the slower blinking, but then I found that if you count to 5 when you turn it off in between cycles and then turn it back on and leave it on (without starting) you can verify that the light stays off.