electrical gremlins - please help!! Airbag Ecu? Edit... Fixed

[jamie_z4]

Same mate can't find one either! Just going to wait till one turns up I guess!

[james078]

I am having the same exact issues as Roscoe on my 04' 3.0i Z4 - wipers, windows, radio, some instrument lights all non-functional...I was able to disconnect my wiring from the ABM unit, but did not get the same results as Roscoe - ...any other ideas to try from anyone? I am having water leaks from rain in my trunk space... any modules in there that could cause these same issues from getting wet?

thx...james

[james078]

OK all...I found my culprit...it is my radio AMP located in the battery compartment on the trunk...I've had some problems with rain water getting into my trunk, apparently the moisture has damaged the amp...as soon as i unplugged it, everything came back to life (except the radio of course for obvious reasons)... so I'll look for a used AMP and try to find the source of my water leak into the trunk...

cheers...James

[ph001]

Didn’t realise the amp was plugged into the canbus! One to remember. Well done for sorting.

[zagamuffin]

Great info, having similar issues, started with Ann and airbag lights , charged battery and disconnected to reset system and now don’t have windows on switch’s , dash lights and radio on locked

[colb]

My experience with airbag modules is one on a Z3, thats located in the centre console as well. Members car that had an airbag light on and he replaced with an ebay one, that didnt work so he bought another ebay one. I got involved and found that he had binned the original he took out and had obtained the two replacements with the same part number. I discovered that the part number of the units was wrong for the car by looking at Realoem parts site to see what was fitted when the car was built. One of our resident breakers on Zroadster.org came up with a correct part number unit and this was fitted to the car. It was coded to the car using NCS Expert, once coded the airbag light went off and system was restored. The car was a salvage car so the history that came with it was not clear so how it came to have the wrong module in the first place is unknown. Once you sort yours put some plastic over the top to give it some more protection from future water ingress, just in case. The two airbag modules he got were found to be duff, both believed to have crash data in them which locks the unit up and prevents any codes they have to be cleared. In order to clear crash data from these modules it has to have the eeprom chip taken off the pcb and read using software like Carprog to find and erase the crash data in order to allow the module to be reused. Have got the software and plan on having a play with the two duff modules to see if I can clear them.
Double check the part number your car needs using Realoem, its important that it gets the right part number, worth mentioning Real oem will list modules that are exchangable retrospectively and those that are not for your car. Any replacement module will of course need coding to the car, with the Z3 I used the data held in the EWS system to code the replacement airbag module.