Anyone replaced seat airbag?

Flyboy152

chrisw wrote: »

Done it now thanks. I cut round the airbag on the old seat and there is a piece of trim the other side of the material which it clips into, sandwiching the material, which is edged with plastic round the opening. Unfortunately there was no way of releasing the tags from the outside so I had to release some of the seat cover on the new seat to get at the tags from behind. The new 'pod' then just clipped into the trim and bolted back on to the seat frame. I refastened the cover using cable ties rather than using the old metal clips.
Seems to be ok as the airbag light has now gone out.

I have rarely met someone so irresponsible as this. If the bag goes off when you are driving down the motorway at speeds (gathered from the obvious lack of regard for others) in excess of seventy miles per hour, what will you do? How will you justify that to the police and ambulance crews, when they are scraping bodies off the tarmac?

Please, I implore you, do not even contemplate selling this car to anybody, without telling them what you have done.

Flyboy152

bigjl wrote: »

I am sure the seat mounted airbags on the mk4 Astra could be removed and put from one seat to another. Have seen them for sale seperately at a Vauxhall.breakers.

I would talk to a Pug specialist as there will be a way to change them it is just a case of knowing how to do it safely.

I am sure that bloke from Wheeler Dealers once swapped a seat airbag on a Beemer, it was a while ago though.

Anybody else watch the episode with the M3?

The seat airbags are designed to be changed i would have though. Wether they are designed to be easily removed when still in working order is another thing.

It might have been easier to get the seat repaired perhaps.

By experts, who know what they are doing (not blind amateurs), with the right equipment and never on a seat that has had a deployed bag.

chrisw

My final post on this matter:-

There is a mixture of good advice and scaremongering here. AIRBAGS ARE DANGEROUS TO HANDLE. There is a small but real possibility that they can be set off by static electricity. An airbag exploding in your hand or towards your face can/will cause serious injury. They work through a combination of electronics and physics rather than some mysterious force.

IN MY CASE, the airbag unit is a sealed, self-contained plastic pod with wiring loom held to the seat frame with a single 10mm bolt. The deployed plastic unit and seat frame showed no sign of damage, scorching or deformation other than a split to the cover where the bag burst through as designed.

The system is monitored by a very sensitive electronic module which will shut the system down and turn on the airbag warning light at the merest hint of a problem. Most errors are caused by a very small change in resistance between the contacts at the plugs. My system is no more or less likely to deploy than any other airbag system.

@Flyboy152 - Of more concern to me would be the cars out there with defective tyres, steering and brakes. Despite this car being 2 litre, it is NEVER driven at more than 70mph - I drove it 60 miles on the motorway last week at 60-65mph (something I wouldn't necessarily do with my own car).

I am 100% confident that the system now is as it was when it left the factory and is infinitely safer than with the previous broken wobbly seat. Any further discussion will not alter my view, so thanks to all who contributed.

pendulum

I reckon if he's fitted a new one and it didn't 'inflate' as soon as he reconnected the battery or turned the ignition on, and the airbag light is off, then everything is fine. I don't see where the additional risk comes from if he's just unplugged the spent airbag and plugged in an unspent one. If there's no damage like he says to any plugs/cables or any other part of the airbag system then everything should be fine.

Flyboy152

chrisw wrote: »

My final post on this matter:-

There is a mixture of good advice and scaremongering here. AIRBAGS ARE DANGEROUS TO HANDLE. There is a small but real possibility that they can be set off by static electricity. An airbag exploding in your hand or towards your face can/will cause serious injury. They work through a combination of electronics and physics rather than some mysterious force.

IN MY CASE, the airbag unit is a sealed, self-contained plastic pod with wiring loom held to the seat frame with a single 10mm bolt. The deployed plastic unit and seat frame showed no sign of damage, scorching or deformation other than a split to the cover where the bag burst through as designed.

The system is monitored by a very sensitive electronic module which will shut the system down and turn on the airbag warning light at the merest hint of a problem. Most errors are caused by a very small change in resistance between the contacts at the plugs. My system is no more or less likely to deploy than any other airbag system.

@Flyboy152 - Of more concern to me would be the cars out there with defective tyres, steering and brakes. Despite this car being 2 litre, it is NEVER driven at more than 70mph - I drove it 60 miles on the motorway last week at 60-65mph (something I wouldn't necessarily do with my own car).

I am 100% confident that the system now is as it was when it left the factory and is infinitely safer than with the previous broken wobbly seat. Any further discussion will not alter my view, so thanks to all who contributed.

Won't you even at least consider getting it inspected by an expert?

bigjl

Flyboy152 wrote: »

By experts, who know what they are doing (not blind amateurs), with the right equipment and never on a seat that has had a deployed bag.

There you go again.

Highlight one sentence or part of a sentence then comment on it out of context.

You need to read the entire post.

But then you wouldn't be able to make a smart !!!! comment then would you.

toastydave

There is no magic to airbags, they are just a well packed bag with a Cordite charge, ignited by a electric fuse,

The fuse is just two wires (one is the live, one the return and earth), the system works by passing a current through the fuse, which then gets hot and sets off the cordite.

once the fuse has got hot, it will break the continuity of the two wires, and the airbag unit will know the bag has been fired.

Now onto to the myths I have read here

The current required to set of an airbag is in the region of 20mA, so 0.02Amps! No chance of burning the connectors on deployment.

There is no chance the airbag from the original seat could self deploy as you need the Airbag computer to send the electrical charge to set it off.

We know the new airbag has been fitted to a working state because,

A. it did not go off on battery reconnection

B. the Air bag ECU will check the connections at startup


The only danger I can see here could be physical damage to the seat, but if that checks out, it all good

johnnyroper

chrisw wrote: »

My final post on this matter:-

There is a mixture of good advice and scaremongering here. AIRBAGS ARE DANGEROUS TO HANDLE. There is a small but real possibility that they can be set off by static electricity. An airbag exploding in your hand or towards your face can/will cause serious injury. They work through a combination of electronics and physics rather than some mysterious force.

IN MY CASE, the airbag unit is a sealed, self-contained plastic pod with wiring loom held to the seat frame with a single 10mm bolt. The deployed plastic unit and seat frame showed no sign of damage, scorching or deformation other than a split to the cover where the bag burst through as designed.

The system is monitored by a very sensitive electronic module which will shut the system down and turn on the airbag warning light at the merest hint of a problem. Most errors are caused by a very small change in resistance between the contacts at the plugs. My system is no more or less likely to deploy than any other airbag system.

@Flyboy152 - Of more concern to me would be the cars out there with defective tyres, steering and brakes. Despite this car being 2 litre, it is NEVER driven at more than 70mph - I drove it 60 miles on the motorway last week at 60-65mph (something I wouldn't necessarily do with my own car).

I am 100% confident that the system now is as it was when it left the factory and is infinitely safer than with the previous broken wobbly seat. Any further discussion will not alter my view, so thanks to all who contributed.

agreed there are so many people who pipe up to scaremonger.
Yes they can be dangerous if handled incorrectly,but do people really think the makers of airbags make them to be extremely volatile to handle like the kind of explosives the Taliban handle??
If the battery is disconnected while disconnecting/connecting the plug then they are fairly safe unless chucked on a fire or something.


side airbags are designed to be replaced in event of deployment either as a self contained unit or a bag unit and new seat cover not a complete seat.
From your other post i understand it that you cut the old seat cover to figure how they are changed and then done some stripping to release the unit in one piece without damaging it??

If so i have no idea why people need to comment on it being a safety issue when it quite clearly is not if the air bag housing has not been damaged and it is secure in the seat.

mikey72

toastydave wrote: »

There is no magic to airbags, they are just a well packed bag with a Cordite charge, ignited by a electric fuse,

The fuse is just two wires (one is the live, one the return and earth), the system works by passing a current through the fuse, which then gets hot and sets off the cordite.

once the fuse has got hot, it will break the continuity of the two wires, and the airbag unit will know the bag has been fired.

Now onto to the myths I have read here

The current required to set of an airbag is in the region of 20mA, so 0.02Amps! No chance of burning the connectors on deployment.

There is no chance the airbag from the original seat could self deploy as you need the Airbag computer to send the electrical charge to set it off.

We know the new airbag has been fitted to a working state because,

A. it did not go off on battery reconnection

B. the Air bag ECU will check the connections at startup


The only danger I can see here could be physical damage to the seat, but if that checks out, it all good

I always though it was a chemical reaction, the ecu sets off a gas generator, that inflates the bag.

Flyboy152

bigjl wrote: »

There you go again.

Highlight one sentence or part of a sentence then comment on it out of context.

You need to read the entire post.

But then you wouldn't be able to make a smart !!!! comment then would you.

And you need to wind your flipping neck in. I was agreeing with you and adding emphasis. Or did you not quite understand the nuances of such things. :wall: