Airbag Light - What have you tried?

D

Daffy

Active member
 Bath
Just been to Scotthall BMW (Leeds) to get my airbag light reset - They charged me £98 for an inspection and fault diagnosis, I got to the car and started it and the airbag light was on - Didn't even make it out of the carpark.

NOW, they recon it's the passenger occupancy sensor. Has anyone tried any of the bypass modules? has ANYONE sucessfully had this problem resolved by a dealer?

Cheers,

Martin
 
I'd be interested to hear also. I believe cj10jeeper has had his resolved but I think that was a faulty wiring loom or something. The recall in the states is for the passenger occupancy sensor though so I can see why they say that.
 
Let's hope someone on here has a fix. The sodding light is driving me NUTS!

£98 though! I didn't even make it out of the car park for fricks sake!
 
I know of no after market DIY software that actually resets airbag lights. I can diagnose them on mine (but hell a lights on the dash so not a lot of help).

On the 2 times I've tripped it I paid the dealer £40. One time as spe3tre says it was a faulty door loom and they changed the loom for £60 and threw in the reset into the bill after previously charging £40 to diagnose whereupon it came back on in 5 minutes.

BTW - just as a warning if the light is on NO airbags will trip in the event of a crash so beware.
 
cj10jeeper said:
BTW - just as a warning if the light is on NO airbags will trip in the event of a crash so beware.
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:o :o :o
No one told me that, My light has been on for over a year, I manged to set it off when removing the seats, Being a tightfisted scotsman I figured £40 to reset or live with the light, Settled for live with the light. I would have thought that if none of the Airbags would deploy with this on then should this not be an MOT failure, mine passed an MOT with the light on.
Guess I will be looking to fork out the £40 :x
 
AFAIK airbags are not a part of the MOT. Certainly even fired seat belt tensioners are only an advisory, not fail
 
I read a while back that if you have the occupancy fault and light then ALL of the airbags will be armed not just the drivers airbag if your the only driver.
 
christurbo said:
I read a while back that if you have the occupancy fault and light then ALL of the airbags will be armed not just the drivers airbag if your the only driver.
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So did I, but BMW dealers say differently
 
Nosa said:
or live with the light,
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Actually if you take just that wording, you can see that to 'live with the light' could be totally incorrect in the event of something dreadful happening ...god forbid.

How many people are not made aware by dealers, etc, that if this light is on the system is disabled and the airbags will not deploy..

it is a 'so called' extra safety feature to prevent the fault from accidentally deploying the airbags during normal driving
 
I would be interested to hear if anyone has tried any bypass modules. If there was one that worked I would use one for sure... not taking the car to BMW and giving them a blank cheque to do what they like. This is just ridiculous, it's like the dashpod debacle on the Audi's that ended up in a swap-out programme, but only after appearing on watchdog... and that wasn't even a safety issue!
 
On my E46 i fitted the bypass module, as the last thing i wanted was to take apart the passenger seat. But you can never carry a child as it will go off no matter what.

I still have it sat in my drawer if you wanted to try it. :)
 
chris said:
On my E46 i fitted the bypass module, as the last thing i wanted was to take apart the passenger seat. But you can never carry a child as it will go off no matter what.

I still have it sat in my drawer if you wanted to try it. :)
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I thought it would go off if you had a child in there if it was working correctly anyway. I thought that's why you needed to add the "disable airbag" button for that?
 
Well i got conflicting stories, as its weight sensitive, and apparently its set for 45-50kg, so a light woman for example. But any child will (hopefully) weigh less than that. I did not mind as i got a whole new interior shortly after anyway :D
 
Mine is on too, it happened while I was on a road trip in paris, I put it down to an exploding can of red bull under passenger seat due to my girlfriend pushing seat back to far argh haha!! Everything got wet under the seat and the light came on a little after. The dealer tried resetting the airbag light on inspec 2 service but it game back on straight away after reset. My plan is to swap out those boxes under the passenger seat for ones from a scrapyard donor local quarry always has a couple of z4's in... If this does not work then bite the bullet and get them to change it all :-( I will also clean the connections and inspect the loom.... not a lot of room to work under there may need to take the seat out.

I do wonder though if someone has a proper answer, if the system has a fault with one of the airbags or sensors and the rest of the system is working does it still arm everything in a crash? The dealer will obviously tell you it wont but from a design perspective that would not make sense.
 
regarding the passenger occupancy sensor... are there 2 sensors as the seatbelt warning still works when someone has sat in there with no seatbelt on so I kind of ruled that out unless there are 2?
 
yg54sg said:
I do wonder though if someone has a proper answer, if the system has a fault with one of the airbags or sensors and the rest of the system is working does it still arm everything in a crash? The dealer will obviously tell you it wont but from a design perspective that would not make sense.
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was this not clear?
gookah said:
if this light is on, the system is disabled and the airbags will not deploy..

it is a 'so called' extra safety feature to prevent the fault from accidentally deploying the airbags during normal driving
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The 'design perspective' prevents the fault setting off an airbag when, for example, you are doing 70 down a motorway, hence causing a crash.....
 
Sorry, Gookah, I don't understand? Why would a fault do that any more than it would the drivers side, which always had a driver in? Sorry, might be being dumb but that didn't make sense to me.
 
sp3ctre said:
Sorry, Gookah, I don't understand? Why would a fault do that any more than it would the drivers side, which always had a driver in? Sorry, might be being dumb but that didn't make sense to me.
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Because the system just sees a problem, as an airbag fault 'per see' It does not use identification of the area and just disable that side. For example seat belt pretensioner faults will generate the airbag fault.
The system diagnostics used, are sufficient to assist with fault finding but can not be trusted to accurately and reliably pinpoint the cause, or location, of the fault, so the safest bet is to disable all airbags.. Ask your indy how many codes can be generated by a fault that is not directly the cause of the problem and are actually red herrings.
For example if the wiring loom is shorting out somewhere on the passenger side, then disabling the passenger side only would make sense, but an escalation of that problem might cause the drivers airbag to deploy, and during normal driving that would not be good.
It is safer to just shut it completely down and flag up a fault that requires attention, so that the driver will take his car in to have this problem sorted as quickly as possible.
It just makes the car as safe as any older car that did not have airbags fitted, which is still safer than causing a crash with deployment of a faulty system....
 
gookah said:
sp3ctre said:
Sorry, Gookah, I don't understand? Why would a fault do that any more than it would the drivers side, which always had a driver in? Sorry, might be being dumb but that didn't make sense to me.
Click to expand...

Because the system just sees a problem, as an airbag fault 'per see' It does not use identification of the area and just disable that side. For example seat belt pretensioner faults will generate the airbag fault.
The system diagnostics used, are sufficient to assist with fault finding but can not be trusted to accurately and reliably pinpoint the cause, or location, of the fault, so the safest bet is to disable all airbags.. Ask your indy how many codes can be generated by a fault that is not directly the cause of the problem and are actually red herrings.
For example if the wiring loom is shorting out somewhere on the passenger side, then disabling the passenger side only would make sense, but an escalation of that problem might cause the drivers airbag to deploy, and during normal driving that would not be good.
It is safer to just shut it completely down and flag up a fault that requires attention, so that the driver will take his car in to have this problem sorted as quickly as possible.
It just makes the car as safe as any older car that did not have airbags fitted, which is still safer than causing a crash with deployment of a faulty system....
Click to expand...

LOL, ok, that makes sense... if I re-read the initial post that may make sense too but I didn't get much sleep last night.

The worrying thing from our perspective is taking your car in for this could generate a bill anything from £40 to £2000, so people are unlikely to do it on older cars. I find it outrageous that this issue can be seen as a safety recall issue in the States though, and not elsewhere.

Thanks for the clarification :thumbsup:
 
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