We love our little Subaru Forester Wilderness, which we often take on camping trips instead of our full-sized truck, especially now that we’ve added mods like a lift kit, offroad tires and a skid plate.
What we didn’t especially care for was hearing the driver’s side seat belt chime going off, every time we needed to move our vehicle a few feet when off-road.
About these posts: We thought it would be useful to post some of the mods we’ve done to our Forester Wilderness, in easy to follow steps, as an alternative to having to watch a long video before getting to the meat and potatoes part.
So, let’s get right to it!
Here’s how to easily disable the driver’s side seat belt reminder chime on your Subaru Forester Wilderness and other models of Subaru. (Ours is a 2024 and we can confirm this procedure works on that year model.)
Essential Steps For Disabling The Subaru Forester Seat Belt Chime
- Turn on the ignition by pressing the button, without starting the car. Don’t put your seat belt on.
- Using two hands – one for the seat belt buckle and the other for the release button – insert and remove the buckle 20 times in 30 seconds.
- Turn off the car.
- Start the car and drive a short distance (in an empty parking lot, at very low speed) with your seat belt unbuckled and listen for the chime. If you can’t hear it chiming, it worked!
- Repeat the first three steps if necessary.
The above fix will last until you disconnect the battery, or if you repeat the procedure of plugging in and unplugging the seat belt 20 times in thirty seconds.
*We do not advise operating your Subaru without wearing a seat belt. This modification will result in you not being notified if your driver’s side seat belt is unbuckled. You should be fully aware of the risks of disabling this safety feature.
Note: This procedure will not affect the front passenger side or rear passenger seat belt chimes. The rear passenger seat belt chime can be “disabled” by keeping the belts plugged in, however we find that our dogs sitting on the middle of the rear seat can cause that chime to go off. So far we’ve not found the solution for that issue.
Related post: How to Permanently Eliminate Subaru Forester Auto Start / Stop.
