How to make one airbag fault into two!

[mike74]

Need some suggestions guys before I take more drastic (read expensive) measures.
A bit of background first. A couple of months ago I pushed the driver seat right back when I was changing the clutch MC. When I started the car after this to check everything over, the airbag warrning light was on. I finally tried to erase the fault (driver side seat belt tensioner igniter resistance too high) with a new scanner and lead I recently bought but with no joy. Today I took the car to a garage to plug into vagcom to see if that could clear the fault...same again. As soon as the fault is cleared it almost instantly pops back up. We thought then to try unplugging the igniter (thick grey wire with a red plug on the end) to see if might indicate if it was a wiring fault or the igniter itself but when re-scanned it gave the same fault but with the added bonus of the passenger side igniter resistance too high.
Has anyone got any ideas please? My thinking is that there's a wire or connection been disturbed when I moved the seat but can't find anything untoward.
Please help before I burn it
Cheers,
Mike

[mike74]

Bump
I looked through the folder of receipts I got with the car last night & found one for an airbag slip ring replacement to cure the airbag light (4 years/40k miles ago). Could this be a possibility?

[newsh]

I cleared a fault on my friend's A6 the other day, he was convinced it had happened when he was rummaging under the passenger seat for his wallet, however when we hooked up vagcom the fault was for the driver's side. Maybe check the connections on the other side of the car too.

[newsh]

Just thought.. Could be vagcom gets confused between LHD and RHD cars?

[mike74]

Hmm, interesting. I've not had a look under the passenger seat yet but i'll do that tonight when I get home. I've got the car booked into a specialist a week on Friday but would love to have it sorted by then...or at least know what the problem is.
Cheers Newsh

[elaw]

It's quite possible you just have one or probably several bad connections due to age.

On my 80, a few months ago the airbag light came on with a similar code. I reset it a few times but the problem would immediately return.

About 2 weeks ago, I unplugged the red connector for the clock spring in the steering wheel (my car only has that one airbag), plugged it back together, reset the code and the problem has not come back.

[mike74]

so maybe not the slip ring itself per se? I'll try to check that too before it goes to the garage, cheers elaw

[rxl]

Is the airbag computer with crash data?

[mike74]

Nope, no crash data just showing two igniter high resistance faults

[Monkeymagic]

Most airbag resistant faults in my experience have been dirty connectors. Get some electrical contact spray On them

[mike74]

I'll certainly have a god poke around and clean as much as I can before it goes in. Given the way the fault appeared its definitely likely its just a dirty connector...hopefully.
Is the large green connector under the driver seat connected to the airbag/igniters in any way or is it just for the heated seat? As far as I know, that's the only thing that might've been disturbed.

cheers for the help lads, keep them coming

[Monkeymagic]

Before you pay anyone remove the seats separate/check all the wiring below the seats then spray each connection with contact cleaner then 're assemble.
It should only take 1hour.
obviously disconnect the battery first hold the pos and neg cables together for a few seconds before touching anything. An airbag to the head will hurt.

[Monkeymagic]

Oh and if you decide to burn it I'll give you a fiver first!;-)

[TimE-J]

I personally have changed a lot of wiring plugs underneath seats that had had resistance faults. One easy way to rule the plugs out is if there is a connector underneath the seat, strip back the wiring an inch or 2 behind the plug on both sides and then bypass the plug by soldering in new wire. If the light goes out and clears, chop the wiring and replace with a new plug/terminals.

[Monkeymagic]

Hard wiring On Renault etc was common practice. Never had to on a vag car.