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Well after siting in the house and a bottle of wine later I decided to replace the drivers seat with a more "supportive" bucket seat.
I had always wanted Bride seats but do to the extremely high cost and the huge lead time associated with deliver from Japan etc, I started researching some other seats.
The 2006 STi has driver and passenger air bags so as soon as you remove the seat you are going to get an airbag failure plus the dreaded warning light on the dash. After poking around on www.iwsti.com I read that if you install a 3.3 OHM resister in the wring loom, this will fool the system into thinking everything is OK.
The problem is with the passenger seat as not only do you have the resistor trick, you have a "bladder" in the cushion of the seat that tells the system how hard to deploy. This means that you have to transfer this across to the new seat, after cutting it open and re-installing it. So I figured if I spent over £500 for a seat, Im NOT cutting lumps out of it. Plus the other reason of only installing a drivers side bucket seat is I very rarely carry passengers and the car is just a weekend toy, so its only me that would benefit from the upgrade really.
I then decided to go mad and get a really extreme seat so it feels pretty hardcore. No doubt it will break my back, but its worth it as the car has really gone extreme anyway.
I opted for a Sparco Evo 1 seat and to keep in planted, I am using a buddy club rail complete with integrated side mounts to secure the set. This particular rail means that not only can you mount a bucket seat that uses side mounts, you also retain the forward/aft slide function. As normally side mounts are secured to the car and once installed the seat only fits the driver as the leg distance to pedals cannot be changed.
So in preparation, I bought a pack of 3.3 OHM resistors, some thin gauge wire and a soldering iron.
I made up the following little circuit so that the resistor is insulated and the two wire ends can clip into the seats wiring loom and simulate the presence of a seat that has the airbags present!
I had always wanted Bride seats but do to the extremely high cost and the huge lead time associated with deliver from Japan etc, I started researching some other seats.
The 2006 STi has driver and passenger air bags so as soon as you remove the seat you are going to get an airbag failure plus the dreaded warning light on the dash. After poking around on www.iwsti.com I read that if you install a 3.3 OHM resister in the wring loom, this will fool the system into thinking everything is OK.
The problem is with the passenger seat as not only do you have the resistor trick, you have a "bladder" in the cushion of the seat that tells the system how hard to deploy. This means that you have to transfer this across to the new seat, after cutting it open and re-installing it. So I figured if I spent over £500 for a seat, Im NOT cutting lumps out of it. Plus the other reason of only installing a drivers side bucket seat is I very rarely carry passengers and the car is just a weekend toy, so its only me that would benefit from the upgrade really.
I then decided to go mad and get a really extreme seat so it feels pretty hardcore. No doubt it will break my back, but its worth it as the car has really gone extreme anyway.
I opted for a Sparco Evo 1 seat and to keep in planted, I am using a buddy club rail complete with integrated side mounts to secure the set. This particular rail means that not only can you mount a bucket seat that uses side mounts, you also retain the forward/aft slide function. As normally side mounts are secured to the car and once installed the seat only fits the driver as the leg distance to pedals cannot be changed.
So in preparation, I bought a pack of 3.3 OHM resistors, some thin gauge wire and a soldering iron.
I made up the following little circuit so that the resistor is insulated and the two wire ends can clip into the seats wiring loom and simulate the presence of a seat that has the airbags present!
Lets hope the system works. If not, Ill have to re-install the drivers seat for the MOT test to make sure the airbag light goes out.
I measured the resistor before and after soldering to ensure it wasn't damaged by over heating during the process and both before and after I got a resistance of 3.7 Ohms. Im not so sure why its higher, possibly due to poos quality but all of the other resisters in the pack were the same. Anyway, a lot of people on the forums said that 3-4 Ohms is needed so fingers crossed it should be fine. If it doesn't work Ill do the same but install a slightly smaller resistor and work with trial by error!
Here is a pic of the seat Im waiting on being delivered also:
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