Air bag light
 

Approximately one in every twenty starts my air bag light will remain on. In the past when it has been permanently on I have cut out all the under seat connectors and crimped them together and have also replaced the clock spring. Can anyone suggest what would be best to look at next, side impact sensors connections maybe?

Soldering is more reliable than crimping Andrew. ;) Failing that, ask a club T4 owner to call in. In about fifteen minutes you'll find out exactly where the problem lies (mine was a surprise: a wire shorting to earth due to insulation damage).

Simon

Thanks for your answer SD1too, in your case was it one of the wires under the seats that was damaged?

No, it was in the passenger footwell behind the carpet just beside the door opening. The T4 reported a short circuit and Phil eliminated all the components which just left the wiring.

Simon

Sorry if this does not sound helpful, but I had Brian (marinabrian) around my house tonight, and whist he was pottering with his T4 he mentioned his wife's car had the Airbag light on, so he plugged his T4 into the car and ran a diagnostic on the Airbag system, this took less than two minutes, the result was it told him exactly which connector was at fault, this coincided with a job he had recently done on the car

So Brian went straight to the indicated sensor, pulled them apart, cleaned and re-assembled, all in less than 5 minutes

Really what I am trying to say to people, is the club has T4 guys, if you have one local.... use him saves a lot of work and unnecessary guessing

I do take your point Kc, but surely even a T4 is not going to find a fault if at the time its not manifesting.

In many cases a fault code is stored in the vehicle's memory Andrew even though the problem might be intermittent. Why not send a PM to Chris in Portsmouth and ask?

Simon

Only ever had the airbag light on twice,both in different cars.
I found the car which had a light that came on and off at different times was the connectors under the drivers seat.
The other one where the light was on constantly was the airbag sensor under the carpet, under the front drivers seat.
This sensor gets affected if the car has had some sort of water leak in the floor area.
Took the seat out,cleaned the connectors and all fixed.
Appears these are the sensors that seem to cause the most issues.

It does, as the stored fault events are there for all time until cleared, even if the system is fully operational and fault free at the time of reading the SRS DCU memory.

In the case of intermittent faults, the fault memory can be cleared, and then once the fault reoccurs, the SRS DCU can be read to see what the latest fault cause is.

In the case of my wife's car, it was the driver's side thoracic airbag, or to be more exact my size eight steel toecaps poked under the seat and knocking the connector for six when removing the rear seat cushion to mop out the water from the boot leak.

This is the first SRS malfunction in over four years, when I installed the PPD leather seats.

Brian :D

Does anyone know of any reader on the market, other than T4, that can interrogate our SRS DCU system. The hand held I have at the moment can only diagnose engine fault codes.
Just done a search and found this, pscan.eu, id be very interested to hear from anyone who's used one.