So, MOT day tomorrow. Over the weekend, I fitted the spare steering wheel I bought and the airbag, everything working fine for many miles since Saturday morning. This afternoon, the airbag warning light comes on with a resistance error. I've reset it with VCDS, and it comes back on. Probably a loose connection. My question is this; given that to get the airbag out, I need to turn the wheel to 90/270 degrees, and the only way I can realistically do this is with the engine running and the power steering going, is there any way I can do this job and keep the battery connected?

I was thinking that disabling the front airbags using this method, doing the wheel turning and loosening the airbag, then doing the rest of it with the ignition off and the keys removed from the ignition, I would be able to do it that way? Surely a disabled airbag going off could be just as dangerous as an enabled airbag not going off (think rear-facing child seats) so if the airbag is disabled within the controller then that's going to make sure that no current goes to it?

Or is it absolutely not worth the risk, and I should do the wheel turning bits then get out of the car with the airbag unattached and take the battery off? I'm just cautious of having the airbag unsecured while I get out of the car and mess around with the battery...

Jack the front end of the car up then turn the wheel?

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Unfortunately my driveway is uneven and sloped, I don't like jacking it up at the best of times and I certainly wouldn't feel comfortable being sat in the car turning the wheel and levering the airbag off. I reckon I can just about do it with one turn of the wheel, with a small enough screwdriver and by opening the height adjustment lever up and putting the screwdriver in the recess the lever fits into, I'll try it first thing in the morning and see if it's doable.

http://www.fabia-vrs.com/technical-info/cruise-control-retrofit/

suggests removing the battery

jacking the car would seem to make sense. Can't recall what I did now, might have just pulled the wheel around (without power steering) but then again, could have had it jacked up

Certainly got to make more sense that playing russian roulette with a loaded airbag - what do you think !?

Well, the way I envisaged it was that it wouldn't be Russian roulette at all; what I had in mind was telling the airbag controller that the airbag was disabled, and therefore it wouldn't send any current down that connection, ever, until the airbag was re-enabled (both easily done with my laptop). If the airbag had been disabled for a legitimate reason (use as a taxi for example, where a driver wearing a seatbelt is optional, or rear-facing child seats) then by going off they could cause more harm than they prevent so I was thinking that disabling them in the controller would totally prevent any current from reaching the airbag unit.

It seems that's not the case though. Although I can find forum posts about people who've swapped wheels without disconnecting batteries, even the Bentley factory repair manuals say the battery has to come off and left for a minute or so to let any residual current discharge first, so that's the way it'll have to be. I very much doubt I can get the wheel around without power steering unless I can get far enough up the drive that I can let it roll down a little way, and jacking isn't an option because I'd have to be in the car to lever off the spring clips, so I'll just have to make it happen somehow!

I always manage to turn the wheel with ignition off when fitting cruise control, maybe I'm just butch..lol