Technical Airbag failure light (2014 1.2 lounge)

[Ginghamdriver]

Bought a cat S fiat 500 for under 3k (2014), now the airbag failure light has popped up. I'm planning on sending it back to the garage that completed the cat s repairs this week, but I have also been told by a friend that it is a common problem for non cat fiats, also.

Just wondering how much it will cost for this issue to be resolved and if you have any idea what is likely to be causing the problem.

I'm not sure if it's related, but it seems to be ever since I moved the passenger seat back for the first time to let someone sit in the back, it was a few minutes after this it popped up.

 

[typecastboy]

Bought a cat S fiat 500 for under 3k (2014), now the airbag failure light has popped up. I'm planning on sending it back to the garage that completed the cat s repairs this week, but I have also been told by a friend that it is a common problem for non cat fiats, also.



Just wondering how much it will cost for this issue to be resolved and if you have any idea what is likely to be causing the problem.



I'm not sure if it's related, but it seems to be ever since I moved the passenger seat back for the first time to let someone sit in the back, it was a few minutes after this it popped up.

It could be many things. It will need to be plugged in to fiat specific diagnostics like MES. That will tell you exactly what the problem is.

 

[Gina500]

This sounds like a contact problem - passenger seat airbag connector, or maybe the seat mat connector.

 

[jrkitching]

Hello and welcome to the forum.

Just wondering how much it will cost for this issue to be resolved and if you have any idea what is likely to be causing the problem.

Somewhere between £0 (a loose connector that just needs reseating) and £2000 (main dealer diagnostics, a new airbag ECU, a few other parts, and programming).
On a cat S car, almost anything could have been affected by the impact and subsequent storage in less than ideal conditions. Start with any parts that may have been removed or disturbed during the repair. As has been said, if checking the easily accessible connections doesn't work, then you need Fiat specific diagnostics to go any further with this.

Also check the rear hatch wiring; a common issue (search this forum for more details) and one that can sometimes cause the airbag ECU to throw a hissy fit.

@typecastboy is our resident expert on repairing salvage.

 

[typecastboy]

Sorry, only did a brief reply when I got home from work last night on my iPad, but I'll go into more detail now I'm on a computer.

As you've said it happened when you moved a seat back, that does give a clue I guess. The passenger seat has three connections underneath. Before touching anything, disconnect the earth terminal of the battery.

The wires come out of the floor of the car under the carpet and connect at the far edge of the seat underneath. Inspect the wires and unplug them one by one and reconnect.

It's also possible that a seatbelt or pre-tensioner could be faulty as they will also put the airbag light on. The only way to know for sure is to plug the car into a Fiat specific diagnostics like Multi ECU Scan. There are many of us on here that have it and I have helped out several people from the forum who have travelled down to me. I haven't seen yet where you live but there maybe someone nearby who can help.

I've repaired lots and lots of Cat S cars and more often than not they are not structural however there could be the odd airbag replaced. Do you know what was actually replaced on it?

I had a similar problem with a car that I had sold a year ago where the buyer texted me and said the light had come on and it had failed it's MoT (obviously it would). She brought it down to me from Essex, I did diagnostics which said it was the drivers airbag and the pre-tensioner. I ordered both from eBay, changed the pre-tensioner, cleared the code and it was OK but the light remained on after replacing the drivers airbag. I had an idea it might be the clock spring (the part behind the steering wheel that the indicator and wiper stalks are attached to). This is the squib for the airbag. Luckily I had one laying around, changed it and it was fine. Even MES didn't tell me this, it only said it was the drivers airbag whereas the airbag itself was OK.

So, in a nutshell, it's a visit to someone with MES which will be your first port of call. Try to avoid Fiat if you can as they will tuck you up with over £100 before they've even done anything. If it does happen to be the Airbag ECU you can get one on ebay with the same number.


Hopefully it's nothing much but if you are going back to the person who repaired it, they may well have a better idea but don't be conned into paying for new parts if, for instance if it's a pretensioner, you can get them for £20 on Ebay. I dread to think how much they are new but it's totally pointless getting new ones.

Let us know how you get on, but I would suggest putting a shout out on here for anyone that might be reasonably nearby that has MES that can at least diagnose what it is, then we can go from there.

 

[Ginghamdriver]

Thanks for the replies, I appreciate it.
The only 'structural part' replaced was the wishbone, the rest was cosmetic repair. Don't think there were any airbags replaced, I doubt from where the crash damage was, that airbags would have been deployed, but I'm no expert.
I'm in the northwest. I'm just hoping it's not a costly fix, I have 11months on MOT so I've got time to get it sorted, it's just a worry, as it seems an otherwise decent car for the price.
Gonna give the guy a ring today and sort out a time for dropping it off, but like you say I don't want to be conned. It was a risk buying cat s and I hope it's not a 'learn the hard way' lesson.

 

[Ginghamdriver]

Looking back on the photos I was sent before repair, I can't see any airbags visible, but fiats have that unusual airbag beneath the steering wheel. I was told nothing other than cosmetic and wishbone.

 

[typecastboy]

Looking back on the photos I was sent before repair, I can't see any airbags visible, but fiats have that unusual airbag beneath the steering wheel. I was told nothing other than cosmetic and wishbone.

If the knee airbag had gone so would the steering wheel one. It’s probably nothing much but essential to plug in the correct fiat specific software to point to exactly which sensor it is. In most cases it will pinpoint it.

 

[Ginghamdriver]

Update, apparently it was the seat belt pretensioner when plugged in to diagnostics. System reset seems to have removed the light, but I'm worried that the pretensioner would need replacing? Garage say it doesn't, and most likely a bad connection which fiats have form for apparently. Any advice? I'm planning on taking it to auto electrician near me next week for piece of mind.

 

[typecastboy]

Update, apparently it was the seat belt pretensioner when plugged in to diagnostics. System reset seems to have removed the light, but I'm worried that the pretensioner would need replacing? Garage say it doesn't, and most likely a bad connection which fiats have form for apparently. Any advice? I'm planning on taking it to auto electrician near me next week for piece of mind.

If the light has gone out I wouldn’t worry. Could be intermittent fault. If it comes back get yourself a second hand one on eBay for £20.

 

[Gina500]

Second that. If it's a contact problem, that should get fixed. Most likely the connector, if not, the cables should be tested. If there is an intermittent contact problem, the light will come back on. The tensioner, if not deployed, should be ok. The problem with these boom bang things is you can only test them once and then they have to be replaced anyway. Means you can't be sure about any of them.
How do you know the airbags will work? No chance, you have to trust them. The check light only tests for the existence of a specific resistance (2.5 Ohms), nothing more.
And many a cars out there don't even have belt pretensioners without being considered totally unsafe.

 

[typecastboy]

The one I referred to above hadn't deployed but was throwing up an error light and MES showed the resistance was subtly different from the other side but it was easier to change it than to faff about. It only cost me £15 to buy a replacement one.

 

[Ginghamdriver]

So the light stayed off for 9 months, and now it's back. The car has been faultless other than this is I'm gutted to see the light back on again today. I've had passengers in the back this week also, so been moving the seat around again which is making me think it's a connection issue with wiring under passenger seat.

I'm now out of my 6months warranty with the dealership too, but don't really want to take it back there anyway for them to just removed the error code and the issue to pop up again in a few months time.

Honestly I'm gutted to be dealing with this fault again, what would you recommend I do next?
It would be a shame to get rid of an otherwise reliable car.
I'm not technically minded either, so I wouldn't even be able to have a crack at it my self.

 

[Ginghamdriver]

The one I referred to above hadn't deployed but was throwing up an error light and MES showed the resistance was subtly different from the other side but it was easier to change it than to faff about. It only cost me £15 to buy a replacement one.

Any advice would be really appreciated, cheers.

 

[jrkitching]

Any advice would be really appreciated, cheers.

Faults have a habit of recurring. If the cause last time was a faulty connection to the pretensioner, and it was fixed by reseating the connector, there's a good chance the connection has gone faulty again.

If you were @typecastboy, my guess is your next step would be to buy a salvaged pretensioner for £20 or so, fit it and use MES to clear the error codes. This likely has better than a 50% chance of putting out the airbag light.

If you take it to Fiat, they'll probably put it on examiner and read the airbag fault codes. At that point, you'll likely be down £100 or so. If diagnostics shows any components are faulty, they'll replace them with new OEM parts, and you'll likely be down a few more £100's; perhaps many £100's.

If you go to an autoelectrician or an independent garage, you're entirely in the hands of whatever skills & scruples they happen to have. The worst case scenario is they succeed in putting the light out, you have a serious accident, some part of the SRS fails to deploy correctly and someone loses their life as a result. Not likely, in fact extremely unlikely, but an absolute disaster if it does happen, and there is no second chance.

In Germany, all work on airbag systems must be done by licenced professionals and only certified parts can be used. There are no such regulations in the UK, so someone with no formal training and no specialised knowledge can work on these safety critical system without supervision or checks. The Vehicle Salvage Code of Practice clearly states that secondhand SRS components must never be reused, yet they are freely advertised for sale all over the internet. It is widely recognised in the trade that only a change in the law will stop this practice.

The final choice must be yours and yours alone. Repairing airbag systems by the book is almost never cheap, since secondhand parts should not be reused and new ones are OEM items with heavy price tags.

Sorry if this sounds like a rant. LadyKitching was once badly hurt in a nasty head on collision, and would likely have died had the seatbelt pretensioner not deployed correctly.

 

[Ginghamdriver]

Faults have a habit of recurring. If the cause last time was a faulty connection to the pretensioner, and it was fixed by reseating the connector, there's a good chance the connection has gone faulty again.

If you were @typecastboy, my guess is your next step would be to buy a salvaged pretensioner for £20 or so, fit it and use MES to clear the error codes. This likely has better than a 50% chance of putting out the airbag light.

If you take it to Fiat, they'll probably put it on examiner and read the airbag fault codes. At that point, you'll likely be down £100 or so. If diagnostics shows any components are faulty, they'll replace them with new OEM parts, and you'll likely be down a few more £100's; perhaps many £100's.

If you go to an autoelectrician or an independent garage, you're entirely in the hands of whatever skills & scruples they happen to have. The worst case scenario is they succeed in putting the light out, you have a serious accident, some part of the SRS fails to deploy correctly and someone loses their life as a result. Not likely, in fact extremely unlikely, but an absolute disaster if it does happen, and there is no second chance.

In Germany, all work on airbag systems must be done by licenced professionals and only certified parts can be used. There are no such regulations in the UK, so someone with no formal training and no specialised knowledge can work on these safety critical system without supervision or checks. The Vehicle Salvage Code of Practice clearly states that secondhand SRS components must never be reused, yet they are freely advertised for sale all over the internet. It is widely recognised in the trade that only a change in the law will stop this practice.

The final choice must be yours and yours alone. Repairing airbag systems by the book is almost never cheap, since secondhand parts should not be reused and new ones are OEM items with heavy price tags.

Sorry if this sounds like a rant. LadyKitching was once badly hurt in a nasty head on collision, and would likely have died had the seatbelt pretensioner not deployed correctly.

Thanks for taking the time to reply. I totally get what you're saying about regulations, I suppose we just have to have faith that those who decide them do so for good cause. There is always a human-error risk where people are involved anyway I suppose, with both new and used parts which is scary when you think on it.

Last time they seemed to just wipe the error code as a starting point, but because that cleared it for the best part of a year it wasn't looked into any further. It would be a shame to get rid of it because of this, so hopefully it's nothing too complicated, especially as the fault has stayed away for so long.
I'm going to look for a local auto electrician/airbag specialist in the morning before I go straight to fiat. I don't mind spending a few hundred quid to get the problem sorted long-term, it's just the idea of paying out, only for it to pop up again in the future that irks me.
It seems to be a common problem with fiats too.

 

[typecastboy]

Clearing an error code of an intermittent problem is pointless. If diagnostics point to a problem, it’s going to come back at some point so it needs to be sorted.

As JR says, you can buy a pretensioner for £20. I often change them. Even if they haven’t physically deployed, i.e the metal braided wire pulled through pulling the belt in, the electronics may be faulty. If I have to change a seatbelt, even if no errors on the pre tensioners, I bin them and put new ones in.

I will usually source them as part of a package of belt and pre-tensioner, that way you can be as sure as you can that the belt in the car hasn’t gone in the car the tensioner came out of.

I use secondhand airbags all the time. I can’t see any reason why they are any more unlikely to deploy than a factory fitted one.

If they brought the law in that secondhand components like that couldn’t be reused there would be more cars being crushed as they would not be financially viable to replace with new components for people like myself.

Grab yourself a secondhand one on eBay and just replace it. Clear the code and it’ll most likely never come back again.

 

[Gina500]

I use secondhand airbags all the time. I can’t see any reason why they are any more unlikely to deploy than a factory fitted one.

If they brought the law in that secondhand components like that couldn’t be reused there would be more cars being crushed as they would not be financially viable to replace with new components for people like myself.

Fully support that! More laws like that would generate more scrap and are an environmental disaster vs an at best marginal safety enhancement.
Fight against them while you still can:slayer:

The regulations for handling airbags in Germany are totally over the top, :nutter: so people like me just tend to ignore them :shrug:
I could not even have swapped my seats due to the integrated airbags.:bang:

 

[jrkitching]

I can see both sides of this; increased regulation improves safety (it may surprise you just how much safer a modern car is than one built 50 years ago), but this comes at a cost, and requires sacrifices in personal freedom.

Personally I'm a strong believer in allowing individuals to make their own decisions about the level of risk they are willing to assume. That said, personal freedom should come with a corresponing acceptance of responsibility, including an acceptance of responsibility for those who may be impacted by your decision. Some folks seem to believe that it's someone else's responsibility to keep them safe, and that someone else must be held accountable if something bad happens to them, even something which results directly from their own actions. That kind of attitude will only lead to an ever increasing level of control and regulation.

Regarding airbags, the official recommendation never to reuse such components is actually the result of substantive and thorough professional research into the subject, including a rigorous risk assessment - I've posted links to this previously. It's one of those examples which illustrates the difficulty of assessing risk which has only a tiny probability of happening, but disastrous consequences if it does.

If anyone is seriously interested in pursuing this subject further, I'd recommend taking a look at the work done by Richard Feynmann following the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.

 

[Gina500]

Maybe the wrong thread for this discussion, so feel free to move it elswhere.

Fully agree that 50 years ago cars were extremely unsafe compared to today. I have one of those.
It may be a generational thing, but I believe in a reasonable amount of safety at an equally reasonable amount of cost/hassle. The basic safety device that brings most of the protection is still the seat belt (50 years later), and all other additions like airbags and pre-tensioners just add to that with a diminishing rate of benefit. That's why I would never drive without belt, but have no issues without airbags (50% of my cars don't have one).

Structural changes in the body of the car have certainly added to the safety and there's nothing wrong with that (other than additional weight, which admittedly creates environmental issues from higher emissions).

What I criticise is the prescriptive habit around this. If I can legally drive a car without airbag, why do I have to have one in my newer car ? Even if it is just a facelift, which happened a lot in the 80ies/90ies. Facelift model, airbag now fitted, not legal to drive if the airbag is defective, even if the pre face lift did not have one at all. :nutter:
Safety measures have reduced fatalities in accidents (Germany) from 20.000 to under 4000 per year at an increase of car density by a factor of 20. That's a great achievement, but we will never get it to zero except if we reduce the speed limit to zero or stop driving cars at all.

What I also criticise is the economical/environmental impact of this mindset that makes cars bigger, heavier and more expensive where all common sense would call for the opposite.

In addition there is the "throw away" mindset that starts with the design of components and systems (not only in cars) into maintenace and usage. We have greatly enhanced car lifetimes with better rust protection, but we are killing them on economical grounds due to expensive spares/repairs or "end of maintenance" cycles similar to the smartphone industry. Or some stupid legislation that restricts usage of older cars and so "incentivises" people to replace a perfectly functioning one - which then gets sold to another place on this planet where it keeps going due to fewer restrictions.

A car used twice as long is always more environmentally friendly than a replacement, even if that one emits a little bit less CO2. People make big calls for sustainability but behave totally differently, unfortunately.