Evening all

Well it was all quiet times for me since I did the tyres. Car working like a treat. Then came this week with two broken things in a matter of two days. First thing to break was boot locking mechanism. The boot wouldn't latch shut so was bouncing around over speed bumps. Removed the latch mechanism. Three bolts pulls this out. There is a large sprung mechanism at the top connected to two thick wire connectors. These push into plastic retainers. Difficult to remove - one points up, one points down and there is hardly any slack on these. Then there is a boot open sensor that has no visible connector but clips into the mechanism and can be popped out relatively easily. With this you release the mechanism from the car. What I found was a long brass coloured lever that unlatches the latch and this has a small spring on it. The spring was snapped. Quick fix for this is to using some thin wire to tie it to the main sprung lever at the top so that this bigger lever pulls it back after unlatching. Didn't take a photo of what I did but I will when the replacement arrives (£28 on ebay). I had to do the repair in a Lidl car park as I was leaving the car and had thousands of pounds of tools in the boot. Refitting the mechanism is a pain in the back side. This is due to the lack of play on the two metal rods. I found the easiest way was remove the plastic retainer for the lower rod, fit that to the lower rod first and push that retainer into the mechanism and then with some patience the top rod and go straight into the plastic retainer which in turn can be locked in place with a flat head screw driver. I was pretty pleased with my fix!! And it can only ever fail open. Obviously looking forward to getting replacement part!!

Next morning, would you believe it, get into the car, put seat belt on and it just pulls straight out. Won't latch in! Very little space to examine the buckle but it doesn't seem to be removable without removing the seat and looks sealed. Ebay ones are fairly expensive so any ideas?

- Is it a common fixable problem?
- If I remove it and bolt another on with battery unplugged will it set airbag light on?
- if it does what scan tool will turn it off? My tablet scanner doesn't seem to communicate well with this car possibly due to OBD1 and age

Meanwhile having to drive with end of seatbelt under my backside to complete that police-friendly look.

Thanks
Sam.

 

It will be possible to separate the halves of the seat belt shell to inspect the mechanism, without removing the seat and buckle. You then might be able to fix it as you did with the boot spring mechanism. The shell can then be glued back together. Or zip-tied! Not an uncommon incident. I've seen it a couple of times.

Shouldn't be any worries with air-bag warnings, only the seatbelt warning from the latch switch is inside the buckle.

The cars are resistant to much OBD interaction, being it was all so new back then.

Nice work with the boot latch. Be careful of the boot latch switch as a lot depends on it. Alarm, boot release and lighting. I've replaced that a couple of times too!

 

Fitted the replacement part today. Job done. The bodge held on for a full 10 days!!!

 

Good advice on the seat buckle. I did what you suggested and split the casing. Very easy to do in my case as someone had been in there before! Pocket screwdriver separated it in about 30 seconds!! The problem was obvious immediately: a spring which pushes the mechanism back up and which is located on a tiny plastic dowel at each end was sitting loose in the bottom of it. Didn't appear anything had actually broken it had just popped out somehow so I put it back in and job done. For now I've wrapped the casing in electrical tape rather than glue it just in case it happens again but if I have no problems before the MOT in November I'll glue it so as not to draw any attention to it.

Thanks for the advice, appreciated.

Sam.

 

If I were you, I'd get the electrical tape off straightaway and go for the glue. Tape is going to leave a sticky, greasy-like residue that will be a pain to get rid of. The glue will not hinder you in the least from popping it apart again. In fact, you'll probably go through several iterations before you get it to hold for more than a week. It is easy to unwillingly pop that junction apart as a part of the seat belt buckling process......