Hi all, my wife hit a curb yesterday (not for the first time!) and it has caused the airbag warning light to come on (and stay on). Car is an Octy mk2 2.0 tdi pd estate.

 

She tells me it was the passenger front wheel that hit the curb and I guess the impact has triggered the system to show an error (no airbags are visible!).

 

Hopefully it is just a case of resetting the system but is this something I can do myself without any diagnostic equipment, or will I need to take it to a vehicle electrician?

 

Any advice would be great!

 

 

You'll need diagnostic equipment to reset an airbag warning light

 

Thanks Langers.

 

One other thing I failed to mention before was that the wire protection cover under the front driver seat has recently come off.

 

Could the wiring under the driver seat (or sliding the seat forward and back) affect the airbag wiring in any way? A broken wire or loose connection perhaps?

Absolutely yes, its the main cause of it on my and many other vehicles.

 

You really need VCDS to tell you what the ECU thinks is faulty, my bet is seat airbag or seatbelt pretensioner, in both cases it will have been a momentary increase in resistance as the connector was disturbed, probably a reset and you will never see the warning again if she keeps off the kerbs, if you are unlucky like my vehicle for the previous owners it will keep returning despite soldering the connections, reflowing the soldered joints on the control module etc, I now have a parallel shunt resistor to bring the resistance down just enough to prevent the rogue triggering, the airbag should still deploy if and when needed.

4 hours ago, J.R. said:

Absolutely yes, its the main cause of it on my and many other vehicles.

 

 I now have a parallel shunt resistor to bring the resistance down just enough to prevent the rogue triggering, the airbag

 

Ha Ha Ha! Talk about famous last words the light came on again tonight, what a coincidence.

 

Clearly I have yet to resolve the issue that my car has had for 12 years but at least with VCDS its no real hassle to reset it because I guarantee that tomorrow it will be once again the correct resistance.

 

I can confirm to the OP that in my case the smallest of bumps is enough to cause the problem even after replacing the connector with a Wago that keeps a constant pressure on the conductors, a rear seat passenger stretching their legs can trigger it, tonight it was doing a U turn on full LH lock, I had pulled off the road onto a parking area, was starting the turn when the LH wheel dropped down a tiny half depth dropped kerb, barely even noticable but the bong sounded and the idiot light came on.

Wow, I fear my thread has caused a practical nuisance for you...sorry!

 

I have done some reading and it seems that the problem could be with the connectors on a yellow wire under the seat, which can be stressed when sliding the seat forward (which my wife does to reach the pedals).

 

Removing the connectors and soldering the wires together can cure it (after vcds reset), but prevents the seat from being removed in future!

 

Hopefully this is the problem (as opposed to my wife’s shunt on the front passenger corner).

Thats the one, wires on a yellow connector (probably a typo) not yellow wires. Hasn't cured it in my case but thats where the problem occurs, I think that I also have a fracture in the wire elsewhere making good contact most of the time.

For the first time VCDS would erase the code and it came straight back, finally I had a permanent fault that I could hopefully find.

 

I did what we modern mortals do and did a google search of this forum and found the following from an old thread,

 

I had read it before but had not taken in that there was a second connector under the seat which is shown in the above photo, looks like I had been faffing around with the accessible but not problematic connector, I managed to locate this one by feel , disconnect then reconnect it and now the fault code is erased.

 

If it returns I will unbolt the seat and do a permanent repair, if it doesnt then previous owners have paid out over a grand in total for diagnosis and resets several times a year, replacement of the airbag which 100% was not done, nice little earner for the motor trade.

A question.

 

Should a generic fault code reader be able to read and reset an airbag warning light?

 

I have VCDS but could not be ar5ed to drag out the computer so I plugged in a generic one bought on ebay recommended on this forum, it brought up no fault codes, I accept it may not bring up the lower level ones that are always present for me on VCDS, bulb warnings, alarm comms etc but surely an airbag warning is a high level or are generic codes just concerned with emissions?

 

Because this reader has yet to find a fault on any vehicle.

 

I also have a torque lite dongle with a phone app but its case is too big to fit in the Octavia OBD port and needs an extension lead.

 

I had intended using one of the readers or even VCDS in OBD mode to reset an airbag light after fixing the fault on a girlfriends car, will it need a vehicle specific or garage Snap on type reader?

Pain in the arse, Airbag lights. I had the issue on the A4.

 

Never had a problem with the Octy so far and i caught my front passenger side alloy when i got impatient with a bloke doing 10mph in a 30 and overtook around central bollard (there was no-one else around)...........only just caught the alloy but it gave it a pretty good whack and ripped a hole in the tyre. No airbag warning tho.......

I went airborne in the MK1 after clipping an unseen projecting kerb as part of traffic calming, it was at night and I had just lost an eye and had operations on the other.

 

Wrecked 2 tyres, steering arm, track rod end but the alloys survived, one needed beating back into shape and of course not a murmur from the electronics or airbag.

 

With the MK2 you only have to look at it for the electronics to have histrionics or just sit in the seat to trigger the airbag light yet again, my neighbour has a newer one with silly big aloys and rubber band tyres, he has wrecked 4 alloys so far with the tiniest of grazes, I offered to try and beat one back into shape for him, he said they were too fragile and he was right, only had to show the rubber mallet to the wheel and a chunk broke out of the rim.

 

I will probably find that there are no longer any problems with the passenger seat airbag, 2 seconds undoing and remaking a connector that has kept the motor trade in foreign holidays for more than a decade.

1 hour ago, J.R. said:

I went airborne in the MK1 after clipping an unseen projecting kerb as part of traffic calming, it was at night and I had just lost an eye and had operations on the other.

 

 

Two replies to that, either Ha ha ha, as in a funny joke, or................

 

And you were driving????????????? 

 

 

Yes I was driving, you can drive with the loss of one eye but there is a period of adaption, you need to developother senses to judge distance and velocity, the one thing that still sometimes catches me out are dos d’ânes (sleeping policeman), tell me that one of those has never caught you by surprise, if it hasnt then wait till you get older, age related presbyte happens to everyone at around 41-43 years.

 

The eye hospital tested me to the required standard for the code de la route (driving test) before allowing me to drive home, nonetheless there is a period of adaptation, it was a dirty dark night, I was using all the road width to take a left turn but they had brought out the RH kerb to make a chicane as a traffic calming measure that judging by the other damage many vehicles had hit, my much younger girlfriend (34 with 20/20 vision) was in the passenger seat and would have had a better view than I as it was on her side and as an ex racing driver I always look ahead to the apex and trust my judgement for the clipping point, she was as surprised as me.

 

I run this road all the time its right by my running club, they removed the chicane nearly 10 years ago after many other accidents.

Edited 20 April, 20197 yr by J.R.