Airbag Module Replacement

Good question; I have looked at the service schedule and wondered the same thing.

My take is that the manufacturers won't guarantee it to operate after ten years, I can't find anything that suggests it is likely to inadvertently operate.
To me that means that worst case is you are driving a car with seat belts but no airbag; I don't know about anybody else but I have done that for years now so I am not that concerned about it. In fact I almost wish I could guarantee the Pax side didn't work so I could use it for the kids.

Anybody else's thoughts are very welcome

GRC said:

Just noticed from Page 2 of my Service Book that the Airbag Module was due for replacement after 10 years (which was more than 2 years ago) as a standard procedure. What's the scoop here? Why? There's quite a few people here with P38s older than mine, so have you done anything?

Spookily - I've had an "Airbag Fault" error message showing and the red SRS light permanently on for a few weeks. I've tried messing with the under-seat connectors but to no avail. How would I know if it's the rotary coupler or something else?

All ideas welcome.

Thank you and good night.
Graeme

Click to expand...

The underseat trick only works on rigs with side airbags, but you are on the right trach. More than likely you simply have a loose connector somewhere. It's not much to go on I know. All of the SRS wiring is in bright yellow looming. I have found a couple rigs with loose connectors at the passenger headlamp/bottom of the battery. I also don't know anyone that has replaced their bags on a schedule.

I read about the ten year schedule in a car magazine some time ago, and it was explained that the "replace after ten years" instruction is from the time when airbags were slowly being introduced and nobody knew how they'd react if they were older, so they just stated to replace them after 10 years.

But when these 10 years or more had passed, experiments showed that the old airbags still worked ok, so most manufacturers changed the time from 10 years to 15 years or even said that airbags should never need replacement.

Sigi

Sigi is correct. It's been changed to 15 years.