UKC

The air bag warning light on my peugeot 406 is now on permanently, when you first turn on the ignition, the trip computer also says "airbag fault". I'm guessing there's a fault with the airbag.
Since the car has 2 airbags, I turned off the passenger bag and the warning still came up. Can I deduce from this that the fault is with the driver's bag?
If so and it is the drivers bag, can I just replace it, fairly easy to do myself, or could the fault be with some other part of the system and is the only way to find out to pay somebody some money who might then expect more money to fix it?

In reply to pec:

You won't be able to tell what the fault light relates to without an OBD tool to read the code from the car's ECU. The fault light remains active even when the passenger airbag is disabled due to this being a legal and safety requirement to warn the driver if there is a fault with any part of the airbag system.

In reply to pec: Not sure about your car but mine has a sensor under both front seats, the wires can either be kicked loose or become trapped and shear off so worth a check, I would disconnect the battery before checking them, just in case. I personally wouldn't bugger about with the actual airbag itself, there's rather more explosive there than you'd think.........

In reply to pec:

Not really of much help but I had the same warning the other day with my 207. But it decided it was ok and now the abs doesnt want to work the next day. I'm convinced there's gremlins in there.
Well french cars are known for their interesting electronics.

In reply to pec: This happened to my 806 this year and failed its mot,if its the drivers bag then it may be the sensor in the string column.i had to have fixed for the mot £167. Get it tested first

Paul

In reply to Paul Troon: Interesting - my Berlingo has has the airbag light on for 4/5 years and never failed an MOT. The airbag will work fine, it's been checked, as it's just one of the wires under the seat playing up.

French electrics...

In reply to mrchewy:


The MOT rules have changed this year, so you will probably find it'll fail next time.

In reply to richparry:

Our car just failed its mot because the airbag light was on. The local garage didn't have the scanning equipment to sort it so we had to take it to a main dealer. The dealer said it was a historical fault and just reset the light. Hopefully it doesn't trip again as paying £50 every year to reset a light could get annoying.

In reply to mrchewy:

As Paul said new MOT rules, any dashboard warning light is now a fail.

To the OP, Generic OBD/EOBD readers will only give you emmissions related data, you need a Scanner with software related to your car. As someone els said, check the under-seat wiring first.

Cheers Adam

In reply to butteredfrog: I'm no expert on MOT's but my Berlingo has also just (07/04) passed its MOT with the air bag warning light on. The MOT'er said that it will be a good while yet until the air bag warning light equals MOT fail (his words not mine!).
Mark.

In reply to pec: our airbag light was on when we bought the car, never bothered me really, I've had plenty of cars without airbags, and the ones I've crashed with airbags, they've never deployed!

regarding the MOT, an MOT tester is not allowed to remove anything from the car, so if you stick a piece of black insulation tape over the airbag warning light, they then can't see the light, and in theory, can't fail it... gotta be worth a try!

In reply to pec: Thanks for the replies. Googling reveals the under seat wiring to be a very likely cause, especially if you regularly adjust the seat which we do so I'll check that first.

In reply to browndog33: Was just gonna say - mine past about 6 weeks ago with the light gone.

In reply to pec:



Mine is just a lose wire under the seat, but the clear the alert you need the software.

In reply to butteredfrog:

You don't necessarily need software related to your car, as long as you can read the fault code you can usually find the code list with some help from Google. Most OBD tools are able to clear the fault (remember when doing this to cycle the ignition after clearing the fault, then read it again to check its gone.).

In reply to t0mb0:

My husband bought a diagnostic thingie for £20 and reset it himself.

In reply to richparry: Yea tell me about it if i had taken my car a week be for it would have passed. you can imagine what my !@£$@@@

In reply to ranger*goy:

That would definitely be a good option except our car is rather obscure (a Ssangyong) and the diagnostic gizmo is £1000+ if you can find it at all.

In reply to pec:
We had a 03 (the new model at the time) new nissan micra that did this. It hadnt renault electrics, dont know of they were common with peugeot too. It was the control unit and meant that the airbag wouldnt operate in a crash. The only way to fix was a new control unit costing £600 and the ecu prevented it being renewed by anyone except a nissan dealer. Could be bad news Im afraid.
Si

In reply to pec: Had a look today to check it out. I found one of the connectors under the seat had become disconnected, surprisingly on the passenger side, so fairly simple after all. The warning light no longer comes on but I didn't have to do any diagnostic type things to make it go away, it just sorted itself out once the wire was reconnected.
Thanks again for the suggestions.

In reply to pec: Whatever you do, don't go fiddling around with airbags. You will get hurt! If your fingers are behind it when it goes off then you will lose them.

In reply to alexcollins123: Its ok, I disabled the system as per Haynes manual instructions.

In reply to pec: other option to try is sometimes the connectors become tarnished/corroded which means the voltage/ampage drops, which causes the system to flag fault, you could try unplugging under the seat connectors a few times if there are any, and smear a bit of vasaline or similar on the connectors.