Seats: Service Precautions
WARNINGS - RESTRAINT SYSTEM
WARNING: To avoid personal injury or death, during and following any seat belt or child restraint anchor service, carefully inspect all seat belts, buckles, mounting hardware, retractors, tether straps, and anchors for proper installation, operation, or damage. Replace any belt that is cut, frayed, or torn. Straighten any belt that is twisted. Tighten any loose fasteners. Replace any belt that has a damaged or inoperative buckle or retractor. Replace any belt that has a bent or damaged latch plate or anchor plate. Replace any child restraint anchor or the unit to which the anchor is integral that has been bent or damaged. Never attempt to repair a seat belt or child restraint component. Always replace damaged or faulty seat belt and child restraint components with the correct, new and unused replacement parts listed in the DaimlerChrysler Mopar Parts Catalog.
- To avoid personal injury or death, on vehicles equipped with airbags, disable the supplemental restraint system before attempting any steering wheel, steering column, airbag, occupant classification system, seat belt tensioner, impact sensor, or instrument panel component diagnosis or service. Disconnect and isolate the battery negative (ground) cable, then wait two minutes for the system capacitor to discharge before performing further diagnosis or service. This is the only sure way to disable the supplemental restraint system. Failure to take the proper precautions could result in accidental airbag deployment.
- To avoid personal injury or death on vehicles equipped with airbags, before performing any welding operations disconnect and isolate the battery negative (ground) cable and disconnect all wire harness connectors from the Airbag Control Module (ACM). Failure to take the proper precautions could result in accidental airbag deployment and other possible damage to the supplemental restraint system circuits and components.
- To avoid personal injury or death, do not attempt to dismantle an airbag unit or tamper with its inflator. Do not puncture, incinerate, or bring into contact with electricity. Do not store at temperatures exceeding 93° C (200° F). An airbag inflator unit may contain sodium azide and potassium nitrate. These materials are poisonous and extremely flammable. Contact with acid, water, or heavy metals may produce harmful and irritating gases (sodium hydroxide is formed in the presence of moisture) or combustible compounds. An airbag inflator unit may also contain a gas canister pressurized to over 2500 psi.
- To avoid personal injury or death, when handling a seat belt tensioner retractor, proper care should be exercised to keep fingers out from under the retractor cover and away from the seat belt webbing where it exits from the retractor cover.
- To avoid personal injury or death, replace all restraint system components only with parts specified in the DaimlerChrysler Mopar Parts Catalog. Substitute parts may appear interchangeable, but internal differences may result in inferior occupant protection.
- To avoid personal injury or death, the fasteners, screws, and bolts originally used for the restraint system components must never be replaced with any substitutes. These fasteners have special coatings and are specifically designed for the restraint system. Any time a new fastener is needed, replace it with the correct fasteners provided in the service package or specified in the DaimlerChrysler Mopar(R) Parts Catalog.
- To avoid personal injury or death, when a steering column has an airbag unit attached, never place the column on the floor or any other surface with the steering wheel or airbag unit face down.
NOTE: A non-calibrated Occupant Classification Module (OCM) is the only component of the Occupant Classification System (OCS) that is available for separate service replacement, as outlined in the procedures that follow. The OCS components of the passenger side front seat cushion including the cushion frame, springs, pad, occupant detection bladder, pressure sensor, seat cushion foam and the OCM are a factory-calibrated and assembled unit. Once this unit is connected to a vehicle electrically, the calibration settings are uploaded from the OCM and stored in the memory of the Airbag Control Module (ACM). If only the OCM is subsequently replaced, the new, non-calibrated OCM learns the proper calibration settings from the ACM after it is connected to the vehicle electrically.
If any of the remaining OCS components of the passenger side front seat cushion require replacement, they are serviced only as a factory-calibrated, assembled, and tamper-evident service replacement package. This package includes the assembled frame, springs, pad, bladder, sensor, foam, wiring and a calibrated OCM. When installing this package, always replace all of the existing components with the new components as a unit. Do not attempt to separate or disconnect any of the new OCS components contained in the service replacement package from each other, and do not attempt to reuse any of the replaced components in this or any other vehicle.
Once any of the original factory-installed components except the OCM have been replaced with the service replacement package components, the OCM can only be serviced by replacing the entire passenger side front seat cushion unit with another complete service replacement package.