THANK GOODNESS WE HAVE AN EXPERT HERE ;-) "If the clockspring did screw up i think it would throw a permanent light." #15 taz355
Oops missed a comma As I said before, not the clock spring, as that will throw a permanent light.(Hopefully that makes sense) If the clock spring is damaged or a wire to the clock spring is damaged it will eventually throw a permanent light. The problem is that the airbag lighte does not really function that way. Obviously the wsm explains it better but its kind of an on or off thing. If things are working it stays off, if not stays on. An intermittent light to me means someone has screwed with the system or its possible a bulb or being jumpered. All the jumpered thing will do is light the bulb from a different system and then shut if off when the other system shuts off. Which in reality means its been bypassed. What makes me think its jumpered is that even when testing its on or off not dim, bright, and off. It really only has the 2 conditions.
Telling me I'm not getting the message (message apparently being: I Grant, am right and you are wrong. Do not question my thought process.") is not particularly polite. Until the point one of us works on the car and fixes the problem we're both just offering ideas, opinions, theories and guesses. When I see you write things like this I don't get the feeling you have a strong background in electricity, current flow or electronics. "Maybe the bulb is faulty?" If the filament is open the bulb will never light. If the filament is shorted (pretty much impossible) the bulb will never light. Miniature bulbs like this have short, sturdy filaments. Very unlikely the bulb has a broken filament making intermittent contact, unlike large household bulbs (with long, supported filaments) that show this behavior, on occasion. "Turn off the master battery cutoff and switch bulbs with another light." Turn off the master battery cutoff to change a miniature bulb? Kind of indicates a lake of certainty or confidence in this very basic type of work. There are certainly times when the master battery cutoff should be used. Not really this one. It certainly can't hurt but it leads me to wonder about your background. "This is why something seems weird." All electrical problems seems "weird" until you find out the answer. I just found this a really odd statement. I'm sure you're a smart guy and very knowledgeable in a lot of areas. I'm not convinced electricity is one of them.
1) Grant is a super smart and very nice guy. Sometimes his posts are a bit hard to follow (Grant, stop drunk posting, will you? ) 2) someone please school me on a "clock spring".....off to google
I'm sure he is a nice guy and smart. Clockspring is a bit misleading but the electrical cable/ribbon cable in the steering wheel assembly is wound like a clockspring. That allows for the rotation of the steering wheel while still having electrical contact with the air bag assembly. If you disconnect the steering assembly, tie-rods etc. and have the front wheels raised in the air, and then turn the steering wheel "too many" turns you could damage the clockspring or make it slip out of a contact socket partially or fully. That could cause and open circuit or an intermittent connection. I rather doubt this is the problem but I wanted to bring it up. https://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images;_ylt=A0LEV0._xL1ZJzkAdwxXNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTByMjB0aG5zBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzYw--?p=airbag+clockspring&fr=yfp-t
Thank you for the explanation. Learn something new everyday. As for Grant, I've spoken to him a dozen or more times on the phone. Great guy. One of the guys here I look forward to meeting. (Grant - send me that check for $20 now )
de nada. I suspect Grant and I would get along just fine talking F-Cars while drinking some quality beer
Yes I understand bulbs, filaments etc very well but many on here do not. i do not get technical with people who may not understand and rather try to help them simply, jrather than confuse them. I did not say the filament was broken because I believe it is not. The bulb being faulty was a general description of the bulb, the ribbon circuit it plugs into, could be a led bulb someone changed, many other possible problems. With the generic description offered by the op I was only trying to get him to check it. The reason he must turn the master battery off bcause if he does make a mistake putting bulb back in(such as a led being backwards) or regular bulb not making a connection he will trigger a permanent airbag light and likely have to get it reset by an sd. To avoid this problem I told him to shut it off. Many on here have not done this and had that issue, myself being one of them before I understood the system. You kept asking questions that I believe you and I both all ready knew the answers to so I guess I was getting annoid since this was doing very little to solve the op's original post. I took your post before mine as a bit condecending so I treated you the same way. In the future I would hope if I do have problems you would help since I know I will help you. Since I now know you understand electricity and electronics I would likely keep explanations to yourself more technical on that subject. Cheers
If the bulb has a wrong resitance, this has been known to upset various types of circuits (e.g. turn indications). In some cases, it has been known to trigger the explosive squibs of fire extinguisher circuits. Similarly corroded bulb holders have caused problems. I've had faulty light earths which have only been evident when the car had been warmed up. Regarding jumpered light circuits. One of the previous owners of my car rewired the instrument binnacle to illuminate the CEL and SD lights with the ignition in Accessory, but not in Run or Start. I can quite easily imagine the soldered connections of this illegal wiring breaking down and causing intermittent problems. Unfortunately, with some problems, it's not so easy to offer remote diagnoses. Solutions may be dependent on the technical and observational skills of the original poster.
Corroded bulb holders and faulty ground connections can cause all manner of problems but these are not faulty bulbs. Not sure why there is any reason to believe modified wiring with a soldered connection or connections is subject to "breaking down" unless they used acid-core solder, or something like that. A good solder connection, if that's the case, is a good solder connection whether it's considered "illegal" or not. British and Italian cars seem to be infamous for questionable electrics and electronics so a person could just as easily assume that there could be an intermittent connection from the factory or will be prone to go bad earlier than would be typical in some other cars. Certainly remote diagnosis is not so easy with some, if not many problems and more complicated with minimal or less than accurate information from the O.P.
I agree except oftain over the years I see less than talented people fixing these cars with butcher style precision which certainly does not help. The other problem is like you said not the best descriptions of problems(no disrespect to the op) since I have seen plenty of poorer descriptions as well. I usually try to weigh how long the person has the car because usually the longer they own it the less poor fixes from a previous owner show up. I find many new owners have these problems which are not the factory problems but more so from previous owners who lacked either the skill or the money to fix it properly. As you said sometimes a real crap shoot to diagnose.
I recently shorted my Air bag Module in a 1999 355 F1 Spyder. I found someone that reconditions the TRW module overseas. He had one in stock and sent it to me. I brought it to my mechanic and it went in, no problem. Airbag light acts perfectly. Mechanic was skeptical until he saw the light test correctly.
