Seatbelt Pre-Tensioners
 

Hey gang! Its been a while since i've posted, but I'm completely stumped on this issue. My car has the airbag light on with a 3-4 light flash pattern. More specifically I had the code read and there are two, B1886- Passenger side pre-tensioner seat belt circuit resistance low and B1885 Drivers side pre-tensioner seat belt circuit resistance low. I've done some research and it appears that the most common issue are the connectors under each seat. I tried unplugging them, spraying them with contact cleaner, and reconnecting them to no avail. I made sure there were no stress marks or frays in the wires under the seat as well. Then, I dug into the rear suicide door panels where the pretensioner/seatbelt is located and tried replacing the pretensioner to see if the light goes away. After the 20 pedal reset, and of course having the battery disconnected the light came back with the same codes. So, whats odd to me is, why do both of them have low resistance? I tried looking though the spiders nest of a wiring diagram for the system and couldn't really see an area where they are conjoined. Also I looked under the dash were a green and blue wire (which I am fairly certain connect to the tensioners at some point) were jumped together with a little connector cap and nothing looked out of the ordinary there either. I really never hooked a meter to anything because it was highly discouraged in the Mazda shop manual because I guess it could potentially detonate the device you are testing on. I know this is really long and I appoligise, but what's my next troubleshooting step? Is there a possibility that they were detonated, thus they have low resistance, and the 20 pedal reset or having the battery disconnected wont clear the light? And if the airbags will still deploy with this fault, is there an easy way to cut the positive wire to the warning light on the dash?

Low resistance = short of some kind. Since you replaced the tensioner, perhaps the short is between the wiring going to it and the car body or some other metal thing? I'd trace the wires back and see if you can find some evidence of damage.

Yeah, I opened the scuf guard on the floor right below where the doors are closed, and looked through the harness. No obvious damage, but is there another area where the wires run that is not the doors or under the scuf guard thats easily examined?

How does the Airbag Control module work? Could it be that it is faulty?

Hi all guys,

I am experiencing the same error/warning light. I have tried to put a 2 Ohm resistance on the pretensioner connector in place of the pretensioner itself, and the airbag light disappears. Since the issue seems to be isolated to the pretensioner, I bought 2 spares on ebay, and both of them show the light. So I am literally clueless, could it be that 3 out of 3 pretensioners are faulty? Is there a procedure when installing the pretensioner that could brick them?