Following the advice from the Lotus documentation posted earlier in this thread, I lifted the passenger seat and cycled the SRS connector two times. It made zero difference. Then I ran out of daylight so the driver's seat will have to wait for another day.
For the benefit of others who may want to do this, here are some notes. First, a photo of the seat heater connection:
View attachment 1268912
Note that the two adhesive tyraps holding the two heater harnesses are hanging in free space. That was a common theme under the seat. The adhesive mounts are worthless, they do not adhere to the seat at all.
Next, a photo of the SRS wiring harness and the connector in question:
View attachment 1268913
Look toward the bottom of the photo (which is the rear of the seat) and you can see another of those adhesive ziptie mounts, hanging in free space. Zero adhesion. However, the SRS harness and connector are held in place by three zipties which are themselves held to the seat by three of those push-in mounts like so many other automotive trim pieces use.
Now that you know what you'll see, here are my comments and observations.
1) Removing the seat floor bolts, especially the rear ones, is difficult and time consuming. They are hex head bolts and there is no vertical clearance for a traditional hex socket on a ratchet handle. I have a lot of tools and nothing I own would fit well in the available space. I resorted to a 6mm right angle Allen wrench to loosen them, then a 5.5mm ball-end Allen wrench to rotate them out.
2) Cut the three tyraps immediately. I tried to separate the connector without cutting the zipties. It's impossible, at least for me. I tried removing one, then two, and finally all three and it was still a contortionist's nightmare. And this was on the PASSENGER side where there is potentially more room.
3) The connector instructions say to pry the handle of a "suitable" screwdriver away from the connector body and harness. The instructions are wrong. Instead, take a 1/4 inch flatblade screwdriver and insert it as shown in the illustration. Then pry the handle TOWARD the connector body and harness. This is
much more effective at releasing the latch and allowing the connector to separate.
4) Even with the above tricks... even after doing it once already, and then reconnecting the connector... separating the connector is a PITA. You need at least three hands but there's really only room for 1.5. The hand that has to hold the connector and manipulate the screwdriver would benefit from at least one extra finger and all fingers should be double-jointed.
5) You will be hanging upside down in the passenger footwell the entire time. I have no motion/orientation problems whatsoever and even I experienced a bit of vertigo when I finally got them separated and had the chance to stand vertically again.
6) For such an elaborate connector, there are exactly two contacts inside. The airbag connector contacts are gold plated. The vehicle's harness connector contacts are not. They might be nickel but look more like zinc. Such connectors can be the source of some excess resistance but I didn't see any corrosion or contamination. Nevertheless, I disconnected, reconnected, disconnected, and reconnected again (total of two "wipe" cycles) since I was under there anyway.
7) This connector actually comprises two connectors (one from each harness) and a central housing that has another of those trim-like retainer clips that snaps into the seat bottom. That red latch they warn you about retains the seat's connector to the central housing, which is why you don't need to remove it.
8) Pay careful attention to the Lotus illustrations. There are a lot of places on the central housing that LOOK like they should be latch releases, but they're not. You have to use the correct access point, and you must have the screwdriver in the proper slot (there are two, side by side).
9) Be sure to replace the tyraps with three similarly-sized units. The ones I used are 4.5mm wide and they appeared to be a perfect match.
10) When reinstalling the seat floor bolts there is no way I could figure to get a torque wrench in there to set them to 30NM - and I have several different kinds and sizes of torque wrench. The problem, again, is vertical access above the bolt head. I am a good judge of torque on a wrench so I used some blue (removable) threadlocker and torqued all four to approximately 30NM.
11) They aren't kidding when they say you'll have to reset the windows when battery power is lost. However, the procedure works exactly as described except that I had to hold the buttons down, then up, for much longer than I expected.
12) The latest Alpine head unit which ships in the Evora GT does NOT lose its programming when power is lost. Thankfully, it appears to retain everything in nonvolatile memory. It remembered and connected to my cellphone, it remembered the radio presets, everything. That's better than every other car I've ever owned.
After a good two hours of this, I started the engine and nothing had changed. The SRS light blinked a few times and then stayed on solid. So either the problem is under the driver's seat, or there is a genuine problem with some component in the airbag system. I really hoped it was under the passenger seat but other than gaining experience with the car, I accomplished little. Sigh.
Hope this helps someone!
