Sounds crazy, but I disconnected the electric plug to the front passenger seat and took the seat out to make room for a camping/sleeping in the car trip.

BUT, when I did, the brakes didn't work properly. It was kind of like the regenerative braking no longer worked. The car would barely stop as I backed down the driveway. Plugged the seat back in and it was OK. Repeated once with same result.

Any idea why unhooking the front passenger seat electrical would do that? Any way to fix it?

Thanks in advance for any help.

PS -- I assume no one else is crazy enough to do this, so I admit to having done zero research.

 

I have no firsthand information, but the SJB (smart junction box) is the usual suspect when stuff like happens.

 

Unplugging the front seats would displease the system that keeps track of the status of the side air bags. (assuming your FEH has them) It may well be that resetting this system takes more than plugging them back in. For instance, there probably is a OBDII problem code stored.

And certain things won't work properly while that code is stored. It's like, the cruise control won't work if the tire pressure system isn't working perfectly.

I've found I can get enough length to sleep in the back of the Escape if I move the front seats all the way forward, straighten up the front seatbacks, remove the rear seat cushions, fold the rear backrests flat, and fill in the resulting "hole" with headrests, baggage etc. This would have been more clever if the rear seat cushions perfectly filled the "holes", but they don't.

 

I've had a TPMS sensor fault and cruise control worked perfectly.

 

Thanks Xspirit. That makes sense. I have side air bags (2006) but no TPMS. No codes showed up on the dash at any time.

I too can sleep in the back OK. I found a plastic tub that fits between the front seat and rear seats to fill the hole. I had just wanted more space overall.

The idea of removing seats has explanded my "Car camping" world. I am going to check out and see if non-hybrids like the new FIT would work as a camper if both the back seats and front seat were removed. I am assuming that at worst a code would show up, but hurt nothing to leave it on while I am on a trip.

 

The Escape's removable back seat bottom cushions is a wonderful thing to have, especially compared to our Grand Vitara's inflexible and space-hogging rear seat arrangement.

wptski, It's odd if the Hybrid is different. I have two sets of rim/tire combinations, for winter and summer. I've made the switch enough times, and it causes a TPMS fault every time, that I know cruise control won't work with a TPMS fault.

 

I assume that after the TPMS relearns or you RESET them, cruise control functions? It might be that you are creating a situation where all four wheels fail at the same time. I've never had more than one fail at a time but two within a week of each other and I still have one of the OEM left.

 

Yes, there is a 100% correlation between my TPMS malfunction and cruise control not working. Fix TPMS, and cruise control works again. There's a couple of other odd things that fail at the same time, but I forget which.

And you're right, whenever I have these TPMS failures, it's because I've switched tire/wheel sets, which means all four are in a fault mode.