Air bag for the windbag

If, heaven forbid, we were involved in an accident & the air bag was to deploy, I would be protected, from the centre of the steering wheel, by a blossom of protectfulness. My wife of many years would, on the other hand, be met with a piece of grey plastic.
Fitting & connecting an air bag is straight forward, however would you need to go into the software to enable it? This is on a MK1 f, thanks chaps, Mike.

Probably.:shrug:
A very few people have found it merely plug and play but ...

......but the only way to find out is to have a bump!
The piece of plastic I have in won't do anything, where as the air bag might. I'm sort of happy with that, thanks. Mike

If you install a passenger airbag where none was fitted before it should switch on the SRS light and deactivate the system.

The two ways to ensure the system is working correctly are to either fit the correct SRS ECU or to have the system switched to include the passenger airbag through T4 or www.pscan.eu

MGR offer an SRS ECU already set up for dual airbags - part number YWJ101230 for MGF & MG TF to VIN 5D639630 for £160.54 inc UK VAT from Rimmers - https://www.rimmerbros.co.uk/Item--i-GRID018972 - they also list the actual passenger airbag on that page.

Cars from MG TF VIN 5D639631 on use YWJ000290 so I guess this has to be switched between single or dual bags.

If using a passenger airbag from a donor car grab the SRS ECU from that car.

Thank you very much for this, the ECU, sadly, isn’t available; I only have the module, so it’s another reason to buy myself the pscan I promised myself one two years ago, however other jobs bugger off with the budget.
It this sort of information of which the combined knowledge of the T-Bar excels, we spend a lot of time muttering about minutiae but when we get a meaty bit the knowledge comes out; it’s just a shame we don’t often find the outcomes of questions asked & answered.
T.C. I salute you, Mike.

Hi

I would not bother,retro fitting an air bag into a car that came out the factory without one will be a nightmare.:bang:
If you did,had an accident and it did not deploy,this could open a can of worms .:oops:

I would think that the F would not behave that differently in a crash to a TF.

The passenger without an air bag comes off better than the driver with one in the 2003 TF NCAP test.

file:///C:/Users/kevin/Downloads/euroncap_mg_tf_2003_4stars.pdf

Most passengers in the F/TF have the seat pushed right back anyway,and the air bag may be too far away to be very effective.
As there is no heavy engine up front,just a crumple zone the TF is quite a safe car for frontal impacts considering its design age,as pointed out in the NCAP test.

The passenger airbag in the F is an easy job, basically plug and play.

The passenger airbag is bigger than the drivers one.

We don't have either seat fully back, neither of us is very tall, and we have CD autochangers and under seat subs behind the seats anyway.