Poll answers are anonymous

Ok, we all know the "correct" answer is to just get it done for the sake of safety. However, there are a number of variables out there to consider. I'm not talking about the ECU reflash crap, just the airbag service.

There are some success stories that are encouraging. Not that many, but some

There are some unsuccessful misadventures that are very discouraging. Far more than the above

There is a whole lot of uncertainty when it comes to dealership/technician competency, and the physical state of the vehicle - hacked up gauges, etc

Even the success stories are laden with new rattles and scratches, which aren't necessarily heart breaking, but lend to the uncertainty in making a decision.

There are some ways to disable the passenger bag. There is some mention of this, but no clear instructions, only suggestions of fooling the system using resistors. I can understand this is a sketchy area to be meddling with, and could potentially be met with a variety of serious consequences. But IMO airbags do more harm than good. My gut feeling says that I would rather disable the airbag than have some knob tech yank out my dash and do a half-*** job because he's only getting paid a certain # of hours to do it. No offense to any techs in the room, but the vast majority are going to be very far off the level of work we expect. Not that we have Ferraris, but we deal with enough noise, rattling and crappy interior to begin with, to be adding to that, even more noise, rattling and in many cases improperly reassembled vents and control knobs. Most dealerships don't have superbovine techs.

I have put this off for long enough, and now that the "final" solution is available, I want to know what people's opinions are. If you have a legit way of disabling the airbag that can be reversed for state inspections. Drop me a hint please

1. Just get it done
2. They will screw it up, don't do it
3. Disable bag and rig it up

 

Yeah, Ive had 3 vehicles involved in this recall (2 DD's Toyotas & the EvO)

I had disabled my DD & EvO & drove that way for a few years. Wife finally got me on the move to get it properly done. Results were excellent in all 3 vehicles

 

How easy is it to disable in the Evo?

 

The reason for the Takata air bag recall is that the inflator (the charge that starts the chemical reaction that inflates the bag) can self ignite under certain conditions. This has nothing to do with sensors, wiring, crashes or aftermarket goodies. Unplugging the air bag is not a solution. The potential failure is inside the airbag itself. The only way to be sure that your passenger side air bag may not some day decide that it wants to see what's going on up in your car, is to either have it replaced OR remove it (not just unplug it) from the instrument panel (tech speak for dash). The only way to accomplish this is to remove the instrument panel.

I do know of a good service department in the northeast...you will have to leave your car for however long it takes and you will be expected to make a donation to a retirement fund.

 

Just remove the glove box & the main connector is right there. Disconnect the battery first & disconnect the main plug

You will have an SRS light on going fwd. Warning, some have said that disconnecting the passenger bag disables the drivers bag as well (have not confirmed that)

Here it is:

 

The Takata inflator can be too energetic, fragmenting and producing metal shrapnel. Spontaneous inflation is not the problem.

 

Wrong.

The issue is it explodes and puts shrapnel in the passenger. It does not randomly auto-ignite.

 

Yeah, ive done the White Paper read on the topic since i own 3 cars w/the recall

The bags were only deploying during an actual impact in which the bags were required to fire. NHTSA did not want consumers deactivating the bags. Their reasoning was based on statistics w/the understanding that the vast majority of bag deployments would work just fine. I did not want to take the chance, even though i live in a low humidity area

Heres a quick excerpt from our reputable IIHS.


Link here: (this is not the white paper / just a condensed summary)
https://www.iihs.org/media/cea05d99-...dvisory_40.pdf

 

I can add some info as I literally just did this, and left a solid 1 star review for the dealer.

First of all, I spoke directly with the tech, and believe his intentions were on point. He did rev my car a few times when they pulled it in, but honestly... after all the beigemobiles Mitsu sees, while it's def not cool, I'm not that upset by it. He also informed me that they "found a faster way" to do it now which is basically just loosen everything and they can just squeeze it out. I'm fairly certain that the book still says take everything out, but if you're getting paid on book time, quicker is better so screw the procedure.

Doing the job, they damaged my ignition switch (this is what controls the key chime and door lights). It's not major, but annoying. Then the dealer gave me the run-around and I got hung up on by the service manager. There's another post on it.

As with anything, it's very much who puts their hands on the car that makes the difference. I repaired the switch myself btw, and I guess I just sort of need to believe that they actually swapped out the igniter.

That all said, there were at least three instances of the airbags deploying under circumstances that they never should have AND blowing shrapnel. So we have much less data on whether the bags are deploying correctly, or prematurely etc... because if there was no shrapnel related injury, it likely wouldn't have been reported. If a bag goes off in a 5mph fender bender, and it's fine... you're not saying anything relevant to NHTSA or whoever.

I think the point worth making is... Takata got caught badly in this and their language is not what I would consider representative of the reality of this. Nor is the recall as they were only issuing it (in some cases) based on location (which is idiotic). These airbags should be treated as potentially able to deploy incorrectly, and... I'll stop short of saying "at random" but... I sure as hell don't want to be sitting in front of something that could shred my life. I'm still pretty upset that the drivers bags haven't been recalled.

 

Any SRS code disables the system, doesn't it? So the driver's side airbag probably won't work.

 

This is exactly why I didn't even bother with the dealership. I'd have to drive 6 hours to get to a "trusted" dealership and even then there's a good chance they'll do damage to the interior during the process. I just went ahead and disabled the passenger airbag for the time being, I have a resistor bypass installed to defeat the SRS light, but I still need to get my hands on a MUT scanner to reset the SRS light.(I tripped it in initial testing). On that note does anyone know of a way to reset the SRS without the scan tool? Perhaps through a Tactrix?

 

Any of the professional grade scan tools can reset the SRS light. I say 'any' with the caveat that there is always a particular vehicle a scan tool will refuse to get along with. Mechanics that do a lot of diagnosis own several.

 

I've tried several now but unfortunately I haven't been successful. I no longer have access to a Launch or similar tablet-style professional scan tool, and purchasing one is out of my budget for this project, so I've been trying to find one for less than $300.
I recently dug up an old forum post about an Autel MD802 successfully resetting the code in an Evo IX so I have one of those on order, so hopefully this one's the ticket.

 

Hey, same boat here.

I have even called Mitsu of America to see if they will allow me to uninstall and reinstall the inflator (I have done so on Honda's Takata Recall).

They said NAH.

 

Yeah no way, I have a commercial account with them and they told me to **** right off.

In other news, I received the Autel scanner I mentioned earlier and was able to finally successfully reset my SRS light. Glad I didn't have to spring for a MUT tool or take it to a dealer...