Graham Butcher

It was a genuine message from my insurer, Better by Miles, I have pasted it in my original message.

I just received an email from my insurer advising me to be on my lookout for airbag theft. Apparently so they claim that while it is as common as catalytic convertor theft, it is on the increase apparently and they claim that you may not be aware of this until the first time they are called upon to operate, and they can't because they're not there! Are they right? I'd have assumed that the thieves would not have replaced everything so the car normal. I'd also have assumed the ECUs, would try to communicate with the airbags and when not getting "I'm OK" response back, it would have flagged a warning on the dash? Has anyone any experience this actually happening at all. This the email, copied and pasted here. Preventing Airbag Theft. Will Kerr 14th April 2023 Airbags do a great job of keeping us safe, so it’s only fair to repay the favour. Here, we’ll talk you through some tips on preventing airbag theft. First things first… Is airbag theft a big problem? In terms of raw numbers, airbags are stolen a lot less often than catalytic converters. However, it can be a lot more dangerous for the victim. That’s because, in both cases, you may not even know the part has been stolen. Driving without a catalytic converter is bad for the environment (and therefore illegal). But driving without an airbag increases your chances of serious injury or death. Why are people stealing airbags? To sell on. Disruption to supply chains is creating greater demands for car parts, so criminals gangs are focusing in on car crime. Some garages will pay £200-£500 for a stolen airbag. This spookily-lit garage seems a bit sketchy. How long does it take to steal an airbag? An experienced thief can have your airbag away in around 6-8 minutes. Which models are most at risk of airbag theft? Airbags are manufacturer specific. That’s to say, you can’t put any old airbag in any old car. Thieves will therefore want to target: Airbags from very common models that they can expect to sell on. Airbags they already know there’s a demand for – the more expensive the better. Reportedly, some thefts are being carried out ‘to order’ on behalf of garages looking for a particular type of airbag. This suggests the latter option is probably more popular. How do I keep my airbag safe from thieves? Get a steering lock. This is a visual deterrent that will often put thieves off just by being there. Check out our guide to steering locks and make a wise investment. If you can’t park in a garage (which is probably the best way of preventing airbag theft), choose somewhere well-lit, preferably in view of a camera. Only use reputable garages. As well as buying stolen airbags, it’s not unheard of for dodgy repair shops to steal airbags themselves, simply removing them in the course of doing other work. What should I do if my airbag is stolen? As with any crime, you should call the police, report what’s happened and get a crime reference number. You’ll also need to contact your insurer to get things moving with your claim (assuming you’re on a policy like ours which covers theft). Taking as many pictures as you can will be helpful, both for the police and your insurance claim. Can I still drive my car if my airbag has been stolen? While it’s obviously a risk to your safety, there’s nothing to say you can’t legally drive without an airbag installed. Of course, not all thieves are subtle about their work. Some simply rip the airbag system right out, damaging the car – or even removing the steering wheel altogether. In that case, you may not be able to use their car at all until repairs are done.

Just how would that work on car carriers, you need the blanket to seal the air out you can't do that on car carriers, be they road, rail or ship, you cannot do that. Road and rail transporters all have open floors to the trucks as well as securing straps and on sips, you do have flat floors but loads of securing straps tieing the cars down as well as proximity of other vehicles and their securing straps all of which make getting access to the fire impossible and also getting the fire blanket to form a seal with the deck.

You beat me, I was just about to post this myself 🙃🙃

Yes, I did mean the electrolytic capacitors, or sometimes they use small super capacitors to hold the settings in the NVM ram chips that typically store the user data, hence the mention not of leaving the battery disconnected too long as these would drain away and data once again lost. In my defence, it was late last night, and I was tired 😉

Like @Breezy_Pete said if the sparks are only as result of attaching battery charger leads etc, not a mayor problem, but if the sparks occur as a result of a live cable touching ground while taking power from your partner's car via jump leads, there could be some nasty consequences, there is a tremendous amount of power stored in car battery if being jumped from another car, there is no safety fuse to blow. Equally, with the power lead that plugs into the onboard OBD socket, should the life battery lead make accidental contact with ground, then the fuse designed to protect your electrical gear that needs to be permanently connected will blow, which will hopefully return you to the same state that you would be if you just disconnected the battery without have the temp supply connected, but now you have to find the fuse and if needed input the radio code again. The choice is yours to make at the end of the day, but I think I would be wrong if I did not point out the possible problems to you that you may face.

Very true, the spark itself is not normally an issue with modern batteries as they tend to be sealed and maintenance free so the hydrogen gas can't escape like they used with the wet cells that needed top with distilled water from time to time.

Sorry, my bad, I thought that you meant about losing the presets for the radio stations as you never actually mentioned that you never had the radio code, so you would not be able to input it when and if it asked for it. I agree that there are ways of providing a 12v supply while you are swapping the battery, but it is something that I would personally only attempt as a very last resort as the space in modern cars under the bonnet is very tight, and the cables will get in your way when extracting the old battery and again when fitting the new one. I'm speaking now as a fully qualified Auto Electrical Engineer (retired) and there remains plenty of risks that could cause damage to both your car and also the donor car supplying the power should anything go wrong.

No No, the battery does not have that type of clamp, look at the battery that you supplied the link to, https://www.oscaro.com/batterie-bosch-0-092-s40-080-1777147-2585-p# it has a lip all the way round the bottom of it, that is where the clamp is fitted. The tray has special a shape holds one side of the lip down and the clamp goes on the opposite side to clamp it at the base. Top mounted clamps have almost disappeared on modern cars as the battery fumes corrode the metal and make them less effective.

Do you know the code for your radio at all? AS far as I can see, this is the only thing that will need to be re-entered after disconnecting the battery. If you do, then why are you worrying about maintaining a supply to the car while changing the battery? Newer models of radios no longer need the code as they are all encoded with the rest of the system. I attach a copy of the standard radio for the 2009 Octavia. As I mentioned earlier, the leads on modern cars are just long enough to reach and no longer, this means the positive battery lead is going to be touching grounded metal work during the battery swap over, there is simply not enough slack cable, nor the room to move it out of the way. It is a difficult enough job without having to juggle cables out of the way while trying to put the new battery into place on the battery tray, let alone preventing the positive dead from shorting to the chassis, killing any temporary supply you provide the car with. Plugging that you referred to from Amazon, provides a 12v feed to cars ECU's and the radio, these items are connected to the car battery at all times even when the ignition is off and the car is parked up, so putting a live feed into OBD socket is going to result in a live connection to the cars positive lead and also connect to the chassis (ground). Do it by all means if you really want to risk doing permanent damage to the car. Excuse me for saying this, and I don't mean to offend you in any way, but it would appear that you don't have much knowledge when it comes to cars and how they work, would I be correct in this assumption? If so, then I really recommend that let the dealer/garage where you are getting your new battery from, fit it for you. I saw some earlier posts where you was not even certain of what type of battery you needed to replace the old with, so you are better off being safe rather than sorry should anything go wrong, leave it to someone who knows what they are doing and what battery is the correct type and amperage for your car. The small cost is worth the peace of mind. radio_navigation_system_amundsen__for_octavia_052009.pdf

The fixation bracket is there to secure the battery from falling out in the event of an accident where the car ends up on its roof or rolls over so the battery could then possibly fall out onto the bonnet and short circuit and then will have a mayor fire hazard, not good if you or anyone is trapped inside the car. This bracket needs to be undone before disconnecting the battery and also done up before reconnecting the new one.

It is my understanding that the battery support function (usually called a maintaining function) is only required if you intend to mothball the car for long periods, i.e., it is a car that you only want to use say during the height of summer, like a convertible etc. Also when using such a system, or if doing a quick charge with the battery in the car that it is best to connect the positive to the positive battery terminal directly and the negative to the negative ground connection on the chassis, not directly to the battery. This because if your car has a battery monitoring system, this sits in the negative battery lead and the so if you connect directly to the negative battery terminal, the battery monitor will not be aware of this connection, connect to the chassis ground point connection, then it will be able to monitor the battery correctly. Do not ever try to connect a charger to the car while changing the battery as the positive lead is almost guaranteed to touch something the is connected to the ground and then you have a short circuit on your hand and may even destroy the ECU's or cause a fire. If you don't have enough knowledge or are uncertain of what you are doing, let a garage do the job for you.

I have had to replace the battery in my mk2 Superb twice in its life and I never lost anything apart the steering angle input, and just operating the steering from lock to lock cured that problem. I have also fitted a new battery to my current mk3 Superb and the same thing happened, its not a big deal unless you're going to leave the car without a battery fitted for a while, it will stand a battery not being fitted for a few minutes.

I've only just seen this thread and I have to agree with the advice that @Breezy_Pete has given. Any attempt to try and save any settings is just not worth the risk of destroying everything. I'd be inclined to jump start the engine and then run the engine for a few minutes to allow the suppression capacitors etc within the various ECU's fitted to the car to store some power, and then switch off and replace the battery with your new one. Generally speaking, if this is done without too much delay, you will find that very little or even no data/settings are lost. Yes you see/hear of cases where replacing the battery you have loads of warning lights appear in the instrument clusters, but these usually only appear if the battery is completely dead and has had zero voltage for some considerable time, so any charge stored in the ECU's internal capacitors has also drained away. You might find that if your car has electric steering that when the new battery is fitted, you have a warning light for steering come on. If this happens, all you normally have to do is start the car and just turn the steering from lock to lock a couple of times and the light should switch off once the steering has learned the steering wheel position/angle from the procedure.

Here is something that you don't get to see very often, a YT presenter admitting that they got something wrong, but either way he manages to debunk the myth that EV's are going to save the world. The first video is where he made the error and the 2nd one is where he fessed up. If only our politicians would do the same when they screw up.

Yeah, it looks to me to about 177mph, what did you make it?

Black Stig & Richard Hammond vs the speed camera round 3 - Top Gear - Series 1 - BBC - Bing video

True, but I don't think that the Ad-Blu is all that complicated. The car is being blamed for poor air quality when the air quality is quite good anyway, not that it does any harm to make it better other than inflict more hardship onto people who are already reeling with rising cast of living with wages lagging far behind what is required to keep the balance. Studies have shown that cars themselves only make up a very small percentage of the pollution from the transport group. Lorries, buses, aviation, trains, ships and boats create the lions share but once it is the ordinary motorist who is the one that gets clobbered. Currently, producing electricity creates more bad air than the ICE cars do. The largest amount of pollution is coming from both agriculture and industry, so by helping these 2 sectors improve their act would do massive good for air quality across the globe, but that won't happen because it is not a revenue earner that can easily targeted.

Is a modern diesel engine really any more complex than a modern petrol engine? I doubt it really because you still have all the same items but with a petrol you also have to add in all the ignition system which way more complicated than it used to be with an old-fashioned coil and distributor.

The real big problem with any form of hybrids is the sheer complexity of them. It seems if anything on the electrical side fails, it will also disable the engine as well so a double whammy effect.

Just be glad we're not driving something like a Rolls Royce which I think besides being wider are around 5.3m metres long for smallest models🤔. The mk3 is also difficult in most carparks what with the narrow and short bays. Most of them around here make getting in or out of a bay at least a 2 step procedure.

I think you're right, maybe this VW's doing to pay them back for actually making the Superb such a roaring success that it sold better in the UK than the Passat did so they have been told to cut a few corners to save money and as a consequence the Passat now seems to be a better screwed together car but not as roomy as the Superb, does that make sense of the position?

Ouch surely your not suggesting that it is a design fault, rather than being done to save to money treating it correctly or whatever. I mean that if you think about it, it wasn't a thing until we pulled out of the EU, so it suggests that the two are linked in some way.

Well, here is my problem with the ULEZ scheme and its expansion (it does not affect me as my car is fully complaint), so I'm not trying to denounce it because I'm a skinflint etc, its because I believe I can see though the wool that it hides. I look behind the door so to speak to if there is a hidden agenda and the last few years with our current crop of politicians, I've not been disappointed so far. Now then it might surprise you but that AQI map also can I understand provide a 12 month rolling history of each sites readings on a number of parameters, which I think is behind a paywall, but what is for there free reveals that the air quality is pretty consistent and is generally well within the green safe zone across London as a whole. That suggests that we are not being told the whole truth and nothing but the truth, by the mayor. Now there are a few locations in London and also in other parts of the country that do often read slightly higher but upon further investigation it can be seen that the monitoring equipment has been poorly sited, i.e., close to extractors etc from commercial kitchens, close to underground stations or underground vents, large heavy industrial sites like Tata Steel works etc where you would expect the air to be bad. So that is why I'm dubious about the whole ULEZ and other schemes that are already in operation and more are planned. With regard to the brake light on that Korean car, yes it might well be a problem for that particular brand, but are we/you positive of that? Aren't all cars supposed to follow a rigid code and standards to ensure compliance with the regulations for the markets that they are selling cars to? Well that particular car got through all the approvals stages somehow and still didn't comply with them and was and maybe still is, a major potential problem for some unsuspecting driver? Your Tesla seems to have that aspect addressed, and maybe is something that others should look at regardless of their power plants, ACC is still being controlled by software.

I'll have to try and find out if mine do as well, I'd hate to have someone run into me when that happens, so many clowns these days enjoy sitting right in your slipstream.