Hi all. I'm new to this forum, and to Nissans in general. I bought an '09 Maxima as a first car for my 16 year old son. I just had it in the shop to fix several items that needed to be addressed, one of which was to diagnose why the passenger side airbag light was always on. The shop ran their diagnostics and determined that the airbag sensor is bad and needs to be replaced. My son's mom was the one who took the car in to the shop, and they explained to her that the sensor is inside the seat and cannot be replaced without replacing the entire seat. They priced a new seat at $4000, I assume from a local Nissan dealership. They said we could try to find a replacement seat from a salvage yard, but there's no guarantee that the sensor in that seat would be any good. And, apparently the entire airbag system in the car is now disabled because of the bad sensor in the passenger seat.

My question to you all is, can you verify that what my shop said is in fact true? I've known the shop owner for roughly 30 years. I take my personal vehicle to him for whatever it needs and I've never had any issues with any of the work they've done and I do trust what they tell me. I'm just worried that maybe my son's mom didn't correctly interpret something, since I'm getting this information second-hand.

 

Since you have known the shop owner for roughly 30 years, call or stop by his shop and ask him about the sensor.

Would you trust his experience vs the writing on an anonymous internet forum of self proclaimed experts?