Dog eared passenger airbag in a 355

So my sales guy has been emailing me pictures of my 355 (since it hasnt been loaded on the truck yet) to keep me "busy" until the car arrives (greatly appreciated). In one of the pics, I noticed the passenger airbag wasn't completely flat. They had fixed the shrinking leather issues and it looked great for a day, then the "ears" started to turn up again.

I asked him about it and received this reply:

"We refitted the leather to the airbag cover as intended. We also attempted to straighten the underlying plastic material at
the same time. As with all of these the material ultimately goes back to its original shape, in other words it looked great the day we did it. It is not peeling away, the leather is firmly and permanently attached now. The problem lies with the underlying plastic. It will remain this way until the airbag deploys."

Is there a way to make this sit flat?

Steve
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He could have found a much better way to word that.

The 355 my father purchased has the same issue. All of the leather looks 100% except for the airbag cover has one corner popped up. If that cover is easy to remove, I have a friend that does custom leather work, I'm going to see if he can just make a new one.

 

Wonder if it would lay flat if I hit it with a hair dryer and some pressure?

 

Maybe use the heat from a hair dryer, not sure I would hit the dash with it - might break something

 

Haha!

Yeah, I didn't mean "hit" literally.

Steve

 

I would think heat would shrink the leather more ??

 

Once that plastic is deformed it will never go back to it's original shape. You are going to have to replace the plastic piece inside to get it to lay flat again/ Example---take an old credit card and bend it in half--then flatten it back out--it will always forever have that bend in it and never be perfectly flat again

 

True. I was just thinking of making the plastic pliable with heat and trying to encourage it to go back to its original position. What are others doing? Replacing the airbag? I recently saw a mod to remove the airbag entirely. I wonder if I could do that and make a coverplate?

Steve

 

Drive it for a week, then work on it.... !!!

 

I wouldn't remove the airbag unless you never have any passengers. I don't think the cover is part of the actual bag---the bag should be fine your just dealing with the cover...