Welding Tips and Tricks

A fellow brought in a drivers seat from his Smart car convertible and an armrest that he wants somehow mounted on the RH side. There is a metal hinge plate near the bottom that it would be possible to tack on an attachment with a bit of linkage and a little arm to make it work. Without trying to disassemble some of the seat It would be extremely hard to get in to bolt an attachment to the hinge. Problem is this seat has an air bag inside! My concern is if there is any risk using a welder close to one of these due to various electromagnetic waves etc and if that could set this thing off? There is room behind the plate to force a little gap with the seat material to tack, squirt water and repeat. I found a You Tube video of one going off and at least it blows out the LH side but the seat is toast Anybody have any experience working around these things

no experience with air bags, but i would be really keen to take the air bag out and weld well away from it.
however the other issue is the legals. i don't know your guys rules but they usually don't like people messing with seats with airbags. if a person/driver is in the wrong place when it deploys in a crash, it can kill them rather than save them.
just make sure your legals are sorted before doing anything.

tweake wrote:no experience with air bags, but i would be really keen to take the air bag out and weld well away from it.
however the other issue is the legals. i don't know your guys rules but they usually don't like people messing with seats with airbags. if a person/driver is in the wrong place when it deploys in a crash, it can kill them rather than save them.
just make sure your legals are sorted before doing anything.

The possible legal issue may be something to consider? I have no plan/desire to mess with this seat at all other than possibly attach a bracket for the armrest. This guy is a great repeat customer and I want to do what I can as long as it's safe.Thanks for the heads up.

HF tig might be a concern, but could anything else effect that stuff?

What process are you using? You don't say.

TraditionalToolworks wrote:HF tig might be a concern, but could anything else effect that stuff?

What process are you using? You don't say.

i think its kinda like welding next to a can of petrol.
provided the lids on its probably not going to go up in flames, but even so i think most people will just move it away to a safer spot.

homeboy wrote:

tweake wrote:no experience with air bags, but i would be really keen to take the air bag out and weld well away from it.
however the other issue is the legals. i don't know your guys rules but they usually don't like people messing with seats with airbags. if a person/driver is in the wrong place when it deploys in a crash, it can kill them rather than save them.
just make sure your legals are sorted before doing anything.

The possible legal issue may be something to consider? I have no plan/desire to mess with this seat at all other than possibly attach a bracket for the armrest. This guy is a great repeat customer and I want to do what I can as long as it's safe.Thanks for the heads up.

i don't know what your guys custom car rules are.
over here we have an engineering group we go through. we just ask them whats allowed whats safe etc. they inspect and sign off the legals.

TraditionalToolworks wrote:HF tig might be a concern, but could anything else effect that stuff?

What process are you using? You don't say.

It would be mig.

tweake wrote: i don't know what your guys custom car rules are.
over here we have an engineering group we go through. we just ask them whats allowed whats safe etc. they inspect and sign off the legals.

This is just a beater car the guy picked up cheap for a novelty occasional drive and not about to spend much on it. This proposed mod will have no effect on the structural integrety of anything other than possibly mine if that air bag went off!