Removing airbags, safely!!

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Removing airbags, safely!!

faster4_tec

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My mate has a coupe, well two actually, both exactly the same colour, engine trim etc. which he has used as a donor car. (he offered me what was left of the shell for £35, but would cost me £20 to get it to me (truck with arm job), and another £20 to take it to yard when it is completly gutted.

Anyway, I declined it, as even though I really would love to **** of the parking lot here, it would be another heap of money rotting away.

I had the steering wheel from it, for the below punto, looking at the splines it will fit I reckon, but I didn't have a 22 or 24mm socket to get the punto wheel off (coupe wheel came off with a spanner).

Anyway, that aside, I cut cable and removed air bag neatly, and is still in the boot of my car. I have just kicked and thrown it around a fair bit in a nearby field to see just how much it takes to go off. It didn't, but I want to remove the air bag itself from the front face of the wheel without it going off, if I remember it has weird bolts on, that look a bit like clutch head bolts but not sure.

Can anyone please guerentee me that the thing won't go off whilst I try and remove it from the front, OR can I be safe in the knowledge it won't go off if I leave it in when I refit?
 
like a bomb waiting to go off!

i found a decent way to do it on my saxo when fitting a momo wheel..

i sat of the backseets and got a sharp kitchin knife, taped it to the end of a broomstick and stabbed it a few times. releases the air then so it dont blow up and break your ribs :)

feel free to try other ways :eek:
 
When I worked for a main dealer we had the most expensive firework display ever one Friday Afternoon. We let off 4 air bags one by one. We clamped them in a vice, used a very long wire - trailed it out the workshop and all hid behind each other as we connected the wire to a battery.

My God, didn't they go. You couldn't see across the workshop for white dust (or for the fact that one of trhe air bag came out the vice and hit the light tube)

I would leave well alone!!
 
i remember being involved in an accident, basically we were in a Mitsibushi warrior, and tyre blew out ended up in some dense woodlands , well we had to hit a tree eventually. both airbags went, i was lucky with 2 black eyes and whiplash, my boss, who was the driver broke his nose and 3 ribs!, airbags are dodgy! but they do save lives, just give u alittle pain.

after the airbags popped and dust settled, bit dazed, forgot i was in a pickup and fell out of it, landing in some sorta manure, later to find out we crashed into a company that produces horse manure for gardning!

lovely.
 
unlucky.

But all you guys that have fitted sporting and GT1/2/3 wheels to non airbag puntos, did you just cut the wire or what? as you are all in the same boat as me.

Just looked at my time bomb and realised that the front plate won't stay on the back without the bag there, as it needs the metal framework to bolt into.

oh and I have had an air bag go off when I was in car, but it was a driver only and not mine, my mate thought he could drive and didn't, parked his 2001 clio into just a grassy ditch, set it off, sounds like a large bore hand pistol going off at point blank range fired at the face. He had minor burns, and a bruised neck and nose, I was just dazzed. Best way to describe it is someone firing a big white hard pillow gun at you!! or a grey and white in this case.
 
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