I can honestly for once say trust me I am a professional!!!

All those items need to be replaced. The seat belts you can sometimes get away with not doing if the pretensioners disnt fire and they shouldn't have went off if they were not in use. If the belt retractor is still operating properly and the latch portion isn't pulled down they don't need replaced.

Also all airbag parts are non returnable so it's not a great plan to DIY if there is any doubt something may go wrong. If you snap a tab or nick a wire and ruin a part your up the river.

For what it's worth to have a good Indy shop put the bags in and that way if anything additional is wrong they can contact insurance company and get parts paid for and take liability of install. Since its insurance work labor rate is around 46 an hour.

 

BriMill, thanks for the response!

I guess I don't know enough about how the rotary coupler, control unit, and sensor work...but I can't figure out why they would need to be replaced. I would expect the sensor is an accelerometer...or is there a mechanical component to the "impact" sensor.

Isn't the rotary coupler just a ring on the steering wheel to transmit the electrical signal or is the igniter in this part?

And I can't figure out why the control unit would have to be changed...I assume it's just a simple ECU, right?

 

Airbag components are designed for single use. It's a very high voltage charge that runs thru all the components very fast to make a deployment.

The impact sensor is the mechanical switch aka accelerometer that triggers and once it trips its done.

The rotary coupler or clock spring is extremely similar to a tape measure but maybe 1/8" wide and rather thin. In more than 75% of a deployment when it gets a voltage charge it arcs and either welds itself together or burns thru itself and renders itself useless.

The control module is hit and miss. Sometimes they are fine and the airbag light will go out. The problem is they do not and will not test to see if its a reusable part because of liability if it seems fine but something goes wrong and bags don't go off its on whoever said it was ok to do that...

Personally I don't reccomend doing partial part replacements on a system that's designed to save your life.

 

Thanks for the explanation. Like I said, I've never had any of these components apart to see how they actually work. Maybe I'll do that once the old parts are replaced!

With insurance, it's hard to tell if they simply replace every single part that has "airbag" in the word just for liability reasons. Seems they always just replace parts if there's even a question. For example, I have a $1200 headlight on the estimate, but a $15 bracket bolted on the back of the housing would fix it completely.

I still question why the airbags deployed at such a low speed. They did absolutely nothing to protect us in this crash, neither I nor my passenger actually hit the airbag...which should tell you they probably deployed at too low of a speed! I know the airbag algorithms are complex, it just sucks that you can't even get in a fender bender in a modern car without risking a total loss...

 

Do you mind posting pics of the damage, I really want to see what type of damage that would cause the airbag to deploy!

 

Here you go. It's a little ridiculous really...bumper, grill, fog light. The passenger headlight has a broken bracket and there are some light scuffs on the hood...but no other sheetmetal damage!

All the money is in the interior b/c of the air bags...total of $11k in repairs. I just dropped it off at the body shop this morning and I'm driving around an F150 rental. I'm already missing the ride of the Rover...

 

I've had the misfortune of being in a couple of pretty bad accidents back in the 80's (was in used cars both times) and had the luck of escaping serious injury (other than soreness). While I most definitely credit the safety belt in preventing injury/death, can't say having airbags would have done anything other than added to overall cost of repairs.

On the other hand, I had a minor front end collision a few years ago that caused about as much damage as above to a Jetta. Airbag deployed and once again my belt kept me from getting even remotely close to the airbag. Biggest bulk of repair cost was airbag.

And about years ago had a car break in that resulted on both airbags being stolen. Repair bill was in the thousands.


You probably can guess how I feel about airbags at this point.