In my 95 SE I have the 8-way leather power driver'* seat (the ones with the controls on the front of the seat, right below the left leg), and once in a while (though I can't get this to happen reliably), when I either get out of the car or lift my weight off the seat (if I'm trying to remove my jacket while still in the driver'* seat) while the engine is still on, I hear the three ding chime, the same one that you hear when you run low on fuel. Has anybody else encountered this, and do you know the underlying reason for this "feature"? Thanks a bunch.

Theres is no weight seat sensor on Bonnies ( that I know of ) and there'* only seat belt which is inside the clip part of the seatbelt on your right side.. try when you buckle in pullin your seatbelt up and down to see if it'* a lose connection in there... just my 2 cent duct tape idea .

While it'* not exactly the same, on my '93 SSEi, with the Driver Information Center, you can get the triple chime as a Door Ajar warning if you open a door while the car is running and the parking brake is not on.

If the parking brake is set, the chime is silenced even though you still get the visual warning on the dash. I'm wondering if you're experiencing the same thing, but without the DIC display... Are you opening your door at about the same time you're moving around in the seat?

Nah, I can do this at a stoplight while trying to remove my coat and it'll do it, though intermittantly. The car will be in drive, and the parking brake off, but the door never opens. Every time I unbuckly my seatbelt while the engine is on, the light clearly comes on, so I'm pretty sure the connection is good. Not that this chime is a problem, I was just curious if this was a built in feature or something.

Our old 87 Taurus (a rather electronically advanced car, even by today'* measures, I might say) had a weight sensor in the driver'* seat so that the doors would only lock when shifting out of park when there was more than 50 pounds in the seat. Maybe my mom'* LeSabre has a sensor also since it has that feature of locking the doors when shifting out of park...never really examined it though.

Y'know, I'm not getting the logic here about why you'd need a weight sensor in the _driver's_ seat anyway... I mean, you kind of need a driver all the time anyhow, if the car is being _driven_, right? I could see various reasons for having one on the _passenger's_ side (e.g. airbag deployment, seat-belt reminder buzzer), but that'* about all.

Yes, they now have weight-discriminating sensors for determining airbag deployment speed, but not back in 1987...

My guess is that they put it there so that if a little kid found his or her way into the driver'* seat, */he didn't inadvertently take off in the car and lock out any adults trying to get in. But then again, they would have needed to be able to reach the brake pedal in order to shift out of park, thus they'd need to be tall enough to reach the pedal, which would prolly make you over 50lbs anyway. Ok, so it doesn't make sense, but I swear, it was in the owner'* manual! Something about (not) locking the doors...

Okay, I think I've got it now: with the car running, it'll lock the doors if you get _in_ the car and sit down, but it won't lock you out if you get out and close the doors while the keys are still in the ignition.