a class pair bag

[hen barn]

my wife has a 2001 a class and just had a baby and we brought a £200 car seat and thought we could turn off the passingers air bag so she could keep a eye on the babyin the front. i phoned mercedes and they said that i have to buy a mercedes car seat cost £350 which has a sensor in that stops the airbag working when the seat is in.
Does anyone know if there is another way i could do this using my car seat? ie switch off the passingers airbag
HELP PLEASE!!!!

 

[jberks]

Have a look at this thread. There are a couple of solutions.
http://www.forums.mercedesclub.org.uk/showthread.php?t=16663&highlight=air+bag

If you want an on-off facility, there is
http://www.airbagsystems.com/disconnect.htm
but at $200 then fitting you are still looking at a fair chunk of money.

The best option though is either to buy the transponder seat or don't put a seat in the front. A pain, but the safest option.

 

[Myros]

At the risk of repeating myself

The best and safest place for Mercedes munchkins is in the back. You should really only consider having them in the front if it is unavoidable, i.e. because you have a two-seater ( that's me then)
Transducers and all that are a great idea, but given how little I can trust this computer to even save a word document properly, am I really going to trust a micro-chip not to let the airbag off and severely injure my kids. Not is the answer.
If you could turn the airbag off with a key,as per VW Audi Skoda, then maybe, just maybe, a kiddy in the front seat would pass muster.
The other problem you have to think about is the distraction to the driver with a baby in the front to coo at constantly.That's probably even more dangerous than all of the above.
You might as well get them used to travelling in the back, after all, it's where they are going to spend the next 12 years or so, barring trips in the SL.

 

[AdrianDW]

The domestic boss asked about this the other day when she picked up her new toy (SL) from Merc Newbury. Once I got over the shock of realising she clearly plans to add to the two I created with the first one (gulp!), the sales boy suggested that if we didn't want to buy the nice mercedes seat with the wotsit in it, the dealer could do disable the bag (the car that is, not her !), though it needed to be certified.
On reflection I'm wondering if this a "construction and use regulations" type of thing, because it would fail the MOT if the system were disabled. Isn't it the case with, say, ABS that if you have it, it has to work, otherwise its a fail?

 

[Brett]

On reflection I'm wondering if this a "construction and use regulations" type of thing, because it would fail the MOT if the system were disabled. Isn't it the case with, say, ABS that if you have it, it has to work, otherwise its a fail?

They don't test the airbags for an MOT AFAIK - you'd be pretty peeved if you returned to pick your car up with all of them fired but a tick in the box confirming they worked....