5UBE

Hi folks

I’ve been following this thread with great interest, as I dislike the chimes and my wife absolutely hates them. I bought an ’01 Forester in February and have been trying to find that elusive ‘peace and quiet’ ever since.

The plug-under-the-seat sounded good, but being the compulsive person that I am, I wanted it ALL. I was out to get every one of those chimes… the ‘yer-seatbelt’s-not-fastened-dummy’ one, the 'are-your-keys-STILL-in-the-ignition?’ one, the ‘were-you-born-in-a-barn?-your-door’s-open’ one, the ‘on-the-hour’ one (no, wait… that one’s in the hall… sorry!).

Since I’ve been doing this for a while (ever since cars have had beepers and chimes…), I was pretty sure that I could find the little noise-maker itself. I finally hunted down the culprit yesterday. Under the lip of the dash, just to the left (toward the driver’s door) of the steering column, is a rectangular white box with “010” and a date stamp on it. It’s about 3.5 x 2.5 inches and is a little less than an inch thick. (That’s about 90mm x 70mm x 20mm to you metric types…) It has an 8-pin rectangular plug with 6 leads. I popped out the plug and hit the key. The ‘air bag’ light came on and went off, as did the other expected warning lights, but there were NO chimes, just sweet silence!

So, for now, it’s ‘Mission Accomplished’, but I’ll keep you posted if I discover any ill effects!