Technical Single phase to dual phase airbag

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Technical Single phase to dual phase airbag

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As you may know the idiot company who I sent my Airbag ECU from my Abarth to have the crash data deleted has broken my ECU with power supply errors. They told me to send it back and they have sent it back to me again, exactly the same so it is useless.

The car is one of the single stage airbags so there is a compatibility problem from other cars as the single phase was only used for a while so I need to get the same part number.

Feasibility question: If I get a dual phase clock spring with the dual phase steering wheel airbag wires, and then put a dual phase airbag in, will the ECU from a dual phase airbag car work? In theory it should. Opinions?
 
Don't see any reason it shouldn't work if the ECU expects a dual stage airbag and it has one fitted

Assuming the connection to the clock spring from the car is same and there's not additional wire's on it



I haven’t checked the amount of wires but there’s no extra plugs from car to clock spring. I took the dash out of my latest project this afternoon so maybe I should just try it and if it works I guess I can just get a black one and an Abarth airbag with two sockets.

Got to be worth a try.
 
Are you going to change the passenger airbag too? What about other components?
Air bag systems are carefully balanced, you can't go mixing and matching components between different versions. If you do you are potentally putting lives at risk.


Robert G8RPI.



I’ve already changed the passenger airbag. That is dual phase as I believe they all are. I’ve plugged in a good ecu but it is looking for a second phase on the drivers one. There are no errors anywhere else.
 
This is an absolutely terrible idea.

I’ve risked my job to prevent lesser risks to people from going out into the real world.

Swallow the cost and for the right parts. You’ll sleep better knowing you’ve done the right thing.
 
Feasibility question: If I get a dual phase clock spring with the dual phase steering wheel airbag wires, and then put a dual phase airbag in, will the ECU from a dual phase airbag car work? In theory it should. Opinions?

There's two levels to "will it work?"

There's "will it work" as in "will it extinguish the warning lights and cause the airbag system to appear functional".

Then there's "will it work" as in "can I be certain that the correct airbags and other SRS components will deploy properly in the event of a future accident".

This kind of amateur dabbling when you don't even have access to the manufacturer's service documentation may just possibly achieve the first, but it will never achieve the second.

This is an absolutely terrible idea.

I’ve risked my job to prevent lesser risks to people from going out into the real world.

Swallow the cost and for the right parts. You’ll sleep better knowing you’ve done the right thing.

There's clear industry guidance that airbag system components should never be reused in this way. Sure, properly certified replacements may make the repair uneconomic, but that's one of the reasons why these cars get written off in the first place.

Secondhand airbag components of unknown or dubious pedigree can be bought cheaply on ebay and similar sites; given the cost of OEM parts, the temptation to use them is obvious.

It's widely recognised that stopping this sort of practice will require a change in the law.

@typecastboy: you're probably the most knowledgeable amateur here when it comes to answering your original question; you've probably more experience in rebuilding airbag systems using secondhand parts than anyone else who's likely to respond. Industry professionals with proper access to this information are unlikely to post the details on a public forum.
 
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There's two levels to "will it work?"

There's "will it work" as in "will it extinguish the warning lights and cause the airbag system to appear functional".

Then there's "will it work" as in "can I be certain that the correct airbags and other SRS components will deploy properly in the event of a future accident".

This kind of amateur dabbling when you don't have access to the manufacturer's documentation may just possibly achieve the first, but it will never achieve the second.

There's clear industry guidance that airbag system components should never be reused in this way. Sure, properly certified replacements may make the repair uneconomic, but that's one of the reasons why these cars get written off in the first place.

Secondhand airbag components of unknown or dubious pedigree can be bought cheaply on ebay and similar sites; given the cost of OEM parts, the temptation to use them is obvious.

It's widely recognised that stopping this sort of practice will require a change in the law.

Yep.

I won’t say where I work for obvious reasons, but being simplistic, just before a car rolls off the production line, it gets plugged into a production system that interrogates each diagnosable part of the car and checks it against a version list of parts and software. This is 1 to make sure that it’s got the latest and greatest parts and 2 To check that the correct software for the parts fitted, but 3 and quite importantly to also catch any parts which might have been recalled, but are still in the supply chain. Let’s say purely hypothetically that if the C level airbag fitted to the steering wheel has shown to not fire on some occasions and is replaced with a D level part and all C level parts should be destroyed, this checkpoint will flag up any potentially dangerous parts which have been fitted. The C level part might not flag up a warning...

Fitting anything other than identical parts OR later parts which have superseded the old parts is extremely reckless.
 
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