All,

 

It's been a bit of a long running saga trying to get my fathers long-stood Octavia back on the road.  Problems with the PRNDS all sorting and now down to one thing - the Airbag control module has failed. We know this as a temporary donor air bag control module has been tried which got rid the warning light. The garage has suggested c£700 for a new Skoda airbag control module, which they could code to the car.

 

The question is one of whether it's possible to source a second-hand air bag module and get that re-coded to the car? Has anyone any experience of doing this?

 

I would be very very appreciative of tapping into the collective knowledge of the forum

 

 

 

 

On my MK1 I just fitted one  from the same car in the breakers yard and it worked fine, cost £5

 

If its from a different vehicle that has more or less airbags but same part number then there may be some coding required, what vehicle did the one you tried come from?

 

There are plenty on Ebay for peanuts, even if you are unlucky and it has crash data and is locked out its only £30 to get it erased & reset.

23 minutes ago, J.R. said:

On my MK1 I just fitted one  from the same car in the breakers yard and it worked fine, cost £5

 

If its from a different vehicle that has more or less airbags but same part number then there may be some coding required, what vehicle did the one you tried come from?

 

There are plenty on Ebay for peanuts, even if you are unlucky and it has crash data and is locked out its only £30 to get it erased & reset.

Thank you, this is a reassuring message. I will check what vehicle the donor module came out of; the message I got back from the garage was that although it cleared the warning light, it wasn't speaking to the rest of the car.

If I was to get the exact part no. of the airbag control module, and replace like for like, is the consensus of all you knowledgeable forumites  that this would fit in?

Sounds implausible, you cannot clear the MIL light if the airbag module is missing or not communicating with the canbus.

I think that with the identical part number there is a very high chance it would be plug n play, unless its common to another model that has a different airbag configuration (more or less airbags) or perhaps for different markets then there will not be the coding options to alter.

 

Its too cold, dark & wet to connect up VCDS to mine to see what the options are, with that knowledge you could buy with confidence, without it worst case it would need reprogramming with VCDS, worse worse case it would need dealer programming. I doubt it because a lot of the modules are sold on an exchange basis if the airbags have been deployed.