Lol, Jason fiddling with airbags. I still remember removing your steering wheel one for the first time Jason at Ace and you, along with everyone insisted on standing at least 5 meters away from the car passing tools at arms length.
Technical Airbag light / Control Unit
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Technical Airbag light / Control Unit
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Lol, Jason fiddling with airbags. I still remember removing your steering wheel one for the first time Jason at Ace and you, along with everyone insisted on standing at least 5 meters away from the car passing tools at arms length.
Lol, Jason fiddling with airbags. I still remember removing your steering wheel one for the first time Jason at Ace and you, along with everyone insisted on standing at least 5 meters away from the car passing tools at arms length.
That was fun. I was more worried about the clockspring.
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...There's 2 connectors on each seat. Give each one a push to make sure the two halves are plugged into each other. This is known issue with a bunch of fiat models. Costs you 5 mins of time and might sort your issues out
In the picture below the passenger seat of my 500 has been removed and you can see the cable and the connectors (grey and orange). Those connectors click into place on the bottom of the seat. Have a rummage under your seat and you'll see what I mean.
Jason - that was a very simple check to do before getting it hooked up for diagnostics.
Do you use a airbag bypass plug (Sabelt I think supply one with their seats) when you have the Sparco seat in place or do you just leave the airbag light on ?
Jason - that was a very simple check to do before getting it hooked up for diagnostics.
Do you use a airbag bypass plug (Sabelt I think supply one with their seats) when you have the Sparco seat in place or do you just leave the airbag light on ?
Annoyingly you can't buy the airbag cancel plug that the sabelts use as a spare part. Previously I've just left the light on, the race seat is never in the car long periods of time.
I've got a mate with the Sabelts in his GP so I'm going to poke around that. I suspect that its simply a 3.3 resistor as per most Fiat airbags. If so then its a 20p fix to make the light go out when the race seat is in place (and, importantly, keep the rest of the airbags working in the event of a crash).
I'll be doing this in the next few weeks in preparation for the Spa-Italia festival at Spa Francorchamps so I'll report back when done.
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Have you tried contacting Recaro.
Found the article below in a recent Sunday paper - it wasn't for the 500 but it's close enough. They are bound to have an airbag bypass plug and might oblige.
Remembering your track pictures you were a 'brave' man going around with no airbags.
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Not tried Recaro specifically but I've tried a few others. They tend not to like selling them. All sorts of legal craziness about disabling someone eles's airbag I should imagine. Besides, if as I suspect, it's just a resistor then happy days. It's a 20p part. But interesting read. I'll see what I can come up with.
Going around with no airbags isn't that scary. In club racing they make you disable them. Also I had the race seat mounted on an omp subframe specific to the 500 with proper side mounts and me held into the seat with a 6 point harness. In a rollover I'd be a lot safer than the standard seat and seatbelt configuration
Hmmm. I wonder what the folks who drove cars without seatbelts or airbags who aren't still alive would say about this?
. Unfortunately you just never know when another car is going to come straight into your path without warning. Unlikely perhaps, but such things do happen, and if they do, having airbags could quite literally be the difference between life & death.
Driving with part of the car's safety features inoperative is more risky than driving with everything working. It may be only a small additional risk, but the downside consequences could be catastrophic. Whilst I'm not advocating people should abandon their cars at the roadside if the airbag light comes on, there is a very real and insidious risk of becoming complacent and putting off getting it properly repaired. A small risk may be acceptable if you are only exposed to it briefly, but if you repeatedly twitch the dragon's tail, it'll get you in the end.
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Hmmm. I wonder what the folks who drove cars without seatbelts or airbags who aren't still alive would say about this?
I would agree with all that you have said but there are exceptions in the case of airbags...
My sister is of a small stature (5ft 0.5inch) and has to put the seat up close to the steering wheel.
It would appear that in her case she would be better off not having the airbag on her side as a driver. An airbag should be at least 10 inchs away from you and in her case she's practically sitting on the wheel of her 'safe' Suzuki Grand Vitara. I would think that she would be better off with pedal extensions to get further back or drive a smaller car.
Looking at some statistics there is a 30% reduction in fatality having an airbag installed but some studies have been carried out where you can be worse off with an airbag but it is more in low speed collisions where the airbag is deployed when it didn't need to be. (full report).
The single most important safety feature is the seat belt and is more effective than the airbag (one example comes to mind where there was 1 survivor out of 4). There was an assumption at one time that having a airbag as a sole occupant didn't necessitate the use of a seatbelt. This wasn't correct since no account was being made of non-frontal collisions.
Another area to be wary of is buying cars that have been in collisions and have had airbag replacements done. These need to checked by an expert. In a US study what was found was that one in 25 didn't work.
On a recent posting a reference was made about airbag theft - that reference article also refers to airbags as being the 2nd most stolen item out of a car (US study).
So in conclusion if you driving around in a classic car (at low speed) and you're of small stature, not having an airbag may not as dangerous as one would be led to believe.
And for those with airbags maybe an alarm isn't a bad idea after all.:idea:
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Not tried Recaro specifically but I've tried a few others. They tend not to like selling them. All sorts of legal craziness about disabling someone eles's airbag I should imagine. Besides, if as I suspect, it's just a resistor then happy days. It's a 20p part. But interesting read. I'll see what I can come up with.
Going around with no airbags isn't that scary. In club racing they make you disable them. Also I had the race seat mounted on an omp subframe specific to the 500 with proper side mounts and me held into the seat with a 6 point harness. In a rollover I'd be a lot safer than the standard seat and seatbelt configuration
I've have to await a response from JR :devil: but at the moment it would appear that your 6 point safety harness will 'do a lot' for safety. On a different post you mentioned that the inspections at the Nubergring didn't 'bat an eyelid' at the Sparco setup since it wasn't road legal. There's probably some Rule for that as well.
Driving round the 'ring is an entirely different proposition to driving the school run. Airbags probably won't have much influence on the outcome of the kind of accident you're likely to encounter on the track - a decent harness would likely offer far greater protection (though if I were doing it on any kind of regular basis, I'd probably want a 'cage & helmet, too
). And although driving on the 'ring is statistically much more risky than driving to Sainsburys, that has to be balanced against what many folks would regard as an extremely exciting and rewarding experience.I feel there's also a big difference between driving an older classic without 'belts on a Sunday outing, and using the same car as a daily drive.
As others have said, taking risks in pursuit of excitement is one of the things which stops life getting boring. My point in previous posts is to question the wisdom of exposing oneself to unnecessary danger simply for the sake of saving a few quid.
a decent harness would likely offer far greater protection (though if I were doing it on any kind of regular basis, I'd probably want a 'cage & helmet, too
Completely agree. Which is why this year while I'm campaigning this with a full cage:
Fitted with a carbon/kevlar seat hard mounted to the floor:
And a plumbed in 4 litre fire extinguisher:
I'll be secured by a 6 point harness and wearing a full face helmet:
and HANS device:
with 3 layers of nomex fireproof:
Not an airbag in sight and I'm happy that in the event of a Big One that I'll be as safe as can be. Probably less than ideal to be trundling down to the shops in but I don't worry about the lack of airbags. I worry about the rear trying to overtake the front. But not about airbags
ahmett
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Completely agree. Which is why this year while I'm campaigning this with a full cage:
Fitted with a carbon/kevlar seat hard mounted to the floor:
And a plumbed in 4 litre fire extinguisher:
I'll be secured by a 6 point harness and wearing a full face helmet:
and HANS device:
with 3 layers of nomex fireproof:
Not an airbag in sight and I'm happy that in the event of a Big One that I'll be as safe as can be. Probably less than ideal to be trundling down to the shops in but I don't worry about the lack of airbags. I worry about the rear trying to overtake the front. But not about airbags
Both noiles and kirching are right. in formula 1 they dont have airbags! But on the road i'd like to have one i think it helps.
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Thanks to JR and to Jnoiles for the previous postings. And I would agree in full ernest on getting an airbag light fixed asap. I was trying to put a bit of 'balance' on the discussion.
There are a number of youtubes on airbags and the way that they deploy. It would be advisable to sit well back from the steering wheel.
A few 'tasteful' ones...
And for the knees
A few points,
multi-stage airbags are often used now which inflates to 20 litres (low speed impact) or up to 54 litres (high speed) thus reducing risk of low speed injury.
I have owned many non-airbag cars, but they were slower and didn't handle as well so you knew your limits. There was also less cars on the road, less drink drivers and less idiots
Airbags are PART of the safety package, to be used alongside seat belts, seats, ABS (and associated systems) and crumple zones etc. The money and time that goes into car safety is astronomical however it's up to the individual to use and maintain these features.
multi-stage airbags are often used now which inflates to 20 litres (low speed impact) or up to 54 litres (high speed) thus reducing risk of low speed injury.
I have owned many non-airbag cars, but they were slower and didn't handle as well so you knew your limits. There was also less cars on the road, less drink drivers and less idiots
Airbags are PART of the safety package, to be used alongside seat belts, seats, ABS (and associated systems) and crumple zones etc. The money and time that goes into car safety is astronomical however it's up to the individual to use and maintain these features.
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