What's this? Airbag blues.

[unofix]

9 minutes ago, johnjohn10 said:

Oh I guess that could be pretensioner with no unfastened alarm on it sure. 

There is also the possibility that the two wires (one orange plug) are not used together. If the pre-tensioner/buckle assembly is bolted to the vehicle (or seat frame) it will be grounded. Therefore one wire could just be for the buckle and is connected to ground when the belt if fastened. The other wire maybe the positive detonation wire for the precharge which is already grounded and therefore does not need two wires to fire it.

[johnjohn10]

3 minutes ago, unofix said:

There is also the possibility that the two wires (one orange plug) are not used together. If the pre-tensioner/buckle assembly is bolted to the vehicle (or seat frame) it will be grounded. Therefore one wire could just be for the buckle and is connected to ground when the belt if fastened. The other wire maybe the positive detonation wire for the precharge which is already grounded and therefore does not need two wires to fire it.

Ah makes sense. I'll be looking tomorrow and putting a resistor on the white wire. If that wee a pressure pad sensor would it give up a specific fault code or could it come in as an open circuit in the rcm? 

[unofix]

1 minute ago, johnjohn10 said:

If that wee a pressure pad sensor would it give up a specific fault code or could it come in as an open circuit in the rcm? 

There would be no fault code generated for the seat pressure pad since it is normally open circuit. UNLESS of course it actually doesn't go open-circuit. I have know devices like that on the seat of a forklift truck. They are 180 ohm when no one sits on the seat and they are 0.0 ohm with the driver on the seat. By using a known resistance the vehicle can tell the difference between no one sitting on the seat (180R) and the wires been cut or unplugged which is infinite resistance (open-circuit). 

[TomsFocus]

11 hours ago, Tizer said:

Normally a cars front passenger seat has an Occupant Load Sensor. If there is a frontal impact and the Sensor is showing that there is no one in the seat then the Front Passenger Airbag will not deploy. Obviously the Drivers seat does not need one.

Oddly, modern Fords (Mk3 Focus and Mk7 Fiesta at least) deploy both airbags regardless.  Makes it very difficult to buy a used dashboard from a breakers yard and means higher repair costs for insurers.  The timing of the deployment is slightly different if a belt is not being worn though.

 

12 hours ago, johnjohn10 said:

I read in one of your other posts that you'd never seen a seat belt pretensioner give up a fault code without deploying? So do you think my situation is not the seatbelt Pretensioner? God my brain is starting to melt. What about if I got my ecu srs cloned with a new clean program would that take care of the fault codes or would it still set it off? Just replace the entire srs program. 

Wouldn't take too much notice of my old posts...   Seriously though, I have seen a deployed pretensioner flag the airbag light, just not on a 'modern' Ford which is what that particular thread was about.  It's easy to see if the pretensioner has fired as the plastic sheath below it goes all wrinkled.  In 99% of these cases it is the plugs are fault.  But as yours have already been tampered with, all bets are off!

Honestly, I think your best course of action now is to find the airbag ECU, unplug it, and then use a mulitmeter to test the wiring directly back from the ECU plug to work out which is open circuit. 

[johnjohn10]

20 hours ago, unofix said:

There would be no fault code generated for the seat pressure pad since it is normally open circuit. UNLESS of course it actually doesn't go open-circuit. I have know devices like that on the seat of a forklift truck. They are 180 ohm when no one sits on the seat and they are 0.0 ohm with the driver on the seat. By using a known resistance the vehicle can tell the difference between no one sitting on the seat (180R) and the wires been cut or unplugged which is infinite resistance (open-circuit). 

Well I tried a 2.2ohms resistor to the white loose wires under the seat, no change, then I tried a 3.3 ohms resistor and at the same time tightened a broken connection I had found in the wiring near the ecu after pulling the carpet back a bit and some plastic off too, and since I could see the airbag control module and some other wires clipped in other places I just pushed all those in a bit, moved the wires around looking for other broken ones, no more broken, none were loose that I could tell, reconnected the battery and the airbag light was out! 😊 Ran forscan again came back with previously set dtc not present lamp is off, I attached a photo. So! Seeing as I had done 2 things in my mind, pushing the clips that weren't loose in didn't seem like it would have done anything, but the 3.3ohms wired in and making the broken connection I had found tighter so I went through the procedure and took each one off at a time and check for airbag light again but it never came back on!? So the only thing left that I did was pushing the clips in a bit and moving the bunch of wires around. Could that have been the fix? Will the light stay off? Should I take if for a drive? What length of time would it take to come back on should this be some strange event and was nothing I did? Thanks guys.

[johnjohn10]

16 hours ago, TomsFocus said:

Oddly, modern Fords (Mk3 Focus and Mk7 Fiesta at least) deploy both airbags regardless.  Makes it very difficult to buy a used dashboard from a breakers yard and means higher repair costs for insurers.  The timing of the deployment is slightly different if a belt is not being worn though.

 

Wouldn't take too much notice of my old posts...   Seriously though, I have seen a deployed pretensioner flag the airbag light, just not on a 'modern' Ford which is what that particular thread was about.  It's easy to see if the pretensioner has fired as the plastic sheath below it goes all wrinkled.  In 99% of these cases it is the plugs are fault.  But as yours have already been tampered with, all bets are off!

Honestly, I think your best course of action now is to find the airbag ECU, unplug it, and then use a mulitmeter to test the wiring directly back from the ECU plug to work out which is open circuit. 

99% of the time its a plug, I think you're right. If you didn't see my last post.☝️

[johnjohn10]

18 hours ago, johnjohn10 said:

Well I tried a 2.2ohms resistor to the white loose wires under the seat, no change, then I tried a 3.3 ohms resistor and at the same time tightened a broken connection I had found in the wiring near the ecu after pulling the carpet back a bit and some plastic off too, and since I could see the airbag control module and some other wires clipped in other places I just pushed all those in a bit, moved the wires around looking for other broken ones, no more broken, none were loose that I could tell, reconnected the battery and the airbag light was out! 😊 Ran forscan again came back with previously set dtc not present lamp is off, I attached a photo. So! Seeing as I had done 2 things in my mind, pushing the clips that weren't loose in didn't seem like it would have done anything, but the 3.3ohms wired in and making the broken connection I had found tighter so I went through the procedure and took each one off at a time and check for airbag light again but it never came back on!? So the only thing left that I did was pushing the clips in a bit and moving the bunch of wires around. Could that have been the fix? Will the light stay off? Should I take if for a drive? What length of time would it take to come back on should this be some strange event and was nothing I did? Thanks guys.

OK those are dumb questions yes I know, I just couldn't believe the light went out!! 3 weeks I spent learning about this and working on it do many things I tried, what a relief to see it go out, I'm also just hoping it stays that way and wondering was it really what I have done with moving the wires around at the center console and pushing the clips into the airbag ecu have fixed the open circuit? even though none where noticably loose. Thank you to everyone for your help. 

[TomsFocus]

1 hour ago, johnjohn10 said:

OK those are dumb questions yes I know, I just couldn't believe the light went out!! 3 weeks I spent learning about this and working on it do many things I tried, what a relief to see it go out, I'm also just hoping it stays that way and wondering was it really what I have done with moving the wires around at the center console and pushing the clips into the airbag ecu have fixed the open circuit? even though none where noticably loose. Thank you to everyone for your help. 

The car self-tests the airbag system every time you start the engine.  If there's a fault it'll show up immediately.

If it's a loose plug, it could come loose again at any time, might be a week, might be a month, might be a year...  All you can do is treat is as 'fixed' for now but don't be surprised if it returns in future.