Cheap airbag light fix - brought to you by Bodgit & Scarper
 

Airbag light on? Why waste time and money messing about with under seat connectors and side impact sensors when you can have a permanent fix in minutes and for free?




Airbag light on....


https://i.postimg.cc/3RvX6sdG/20181007_133257.jpg





Out with the IPK, and a quick squirt with a tube of black, sticky, mastic type gloop...


https://i.postimg.cc/76GLf2NM/20181007_130337.jpg







Low and behold, airbag problem "fixed"...


https://i.postimg.cc/L66qZd2V/20181007_124717.jpg







Total cost? Half an hour, a blob of black sealant and your immortal soul...

I'm currently reverse engineering this "fix" on my 1999 V6. With the MOT changes this year the car won't pass it's next MOT like that.


Many thanks to Trikey who kindly T4'd the car a couple of weeks ago, and tipped me off to some airbag errors that I'd been blissfully unaware of thanks to the above handiwork. :bowdown:



Lesson learned - always make sure the airbag light comes on first and then goes out when buying a car!



So I've scraped out the gloop, reassembled the IPK, and now have a nice shiny airbag light. The T4 pointed to side airbag sensors as the culprit, so I just whipped out the passenger side one.


It looks like new to me, no sign of water damage anywhere (the car has a sunroof), but I guess looks can be deceiving....


https://i.postimg.cc/sDkrCS6Z/20181010_102909.jpg




So, if anyone has a spare side impact sensor that looks like that kicking around then please drop me a PM!

I had a similar issue with mine, although (luckily!) someone had just painted over the plastic.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...psh6exqdsp.jpg

Mine was also a crash sensor, easy fix!

Even better! :D


I hope that's the self test thingy, otherwise that's not what you want to see on your dash when travelling at 50 miles an hour ;)

It had been done to mine as well previously with a piece of sticky tape over it - can see the residue. Luckily it had been rectified by the chap I bought it off and I did check the light worked correctly when I bought it.

Interestingly I found a photo of my car on Facebook for sale a while back with a previous owner and black sticky tape can be seen...

I have seen this done before but worse in my view was a piece of circuitry wired into the light so it illuminated for 3 or 4 seconds once the ignition was put on :eek:.

I found it because I put a code reader on the said car and it showed up this fault together with several others that had been bodged.

With the regs as they are now anybody buying a used car even from a dealer should plug a code reader in and see what is potentially wrong with your potential purchase. Even pending codes could show up potential future expense.

The problem is the parts to fix some of these faults on some makes and models makes me think this kind of bodging will become more common place and could be a reason that reading codes could become part of the MOT test.

Well, I've replaced the passenger side sensor with one from eBay and... the airbag light is still on.

Sigh.

Will start stripping out the driver's side.

If anyone has a known good sensor knocking about then please drop me a PM.

My car had the passenger bag unplugged and a resistor bridging the incoming plug....

hope it gets sorted
 

I'm so glad I bought a cheap netbook and downloaded toaf and the srs tool for the mk2 so I don't get stung like this.

First thing I do is ask the seller if I can plug in my code reader if they say no I just walk away.

When the airbag warning light pops on, the airbags and seat belt pretensioner systems on the 'faulty' side are disabled. So, simply painting over the bulb doesn't seem a very wise thing to do.


TC