srs light

ive fitted a aftermarket steering wheel to the wifes 'F and fitted a 2ohm resistor to the airbag loom.

when i start the car the srs light stays on.

any ideas what ive done wrong??

Yes you've done the job on the wife's car.yourself.......you are better letting someone else do it and they get the blame...:coat:

Between me and you I haven't told her yet.

Why are you changing the wheel?

She wanted one.

Everybody has different tastes............ and i respect that :omg:

But it looks like that baby has thrown up strawberry custard onto the steering wheel.

May be obvious, but why the resistor? Wired series or parallel?
2 Ohm is burger all, about the net resistance of a metre of 1mm2 stranded cable.....
Just curiarse....

put the original one back on and paint it red. s r s light on m o t failure. not worth the hassle

Since the airbag firing device is electrical, it has an electrical load value. If you can determine the correct resistance of the airbag detonator, then it should be possible to substitute a resistor in its place to fool the SRS to thinking it has an intact airbag installed.
The method to determine this would be to meter out the airbag and get the resistance.....however I aint too sure that I would want to be using a multimeter on an airbag det to find its resistance...the meter will put out a voltage across the load of the airbag detonator so it could calculate the resistance.
I could see the det having a reasonably low resistance value, maybe 10 - 30 ohms though, so maybe some experimenting with different value resistors could help you to find out what value works. maybe a low value potentiometer will help to find out the correct resistance value.

I myself would prefer to have a fully functioning airbag in front of me instead of a fancy steering wheel, and I do like the stock steering wheel, its comfy and not too big.
Lets hope if you get it to work, you don't have the need of a none existent airbag.

One other possibility I have just thought of is to fit a passenger airbag module and wire it to the existing SRS circuit, so that should cure the SRS light issue and at least the passenger will have a soft landing!

Best of luck

Sundance

Aha, with it now: the airbag is gorn and the resistor is a dummy load. Unlikely you'd set off an airbag measuring the resistance as it's the impact sensor that triggers operation but I'd go at it carefully. If I remember from many years ago resistors come with accuracy tolerance bands, black, red, gold silver etc. As 2 Ohms is low I'd maybe check the actual resistor resistance. With a good meter like a Fluke.

Would rather kiss an airbag than bite a steering wheel tbh.

John and Sue wrote: Aha, with it now: the airbag is gorn and the resistor is a dummy load. Unlikely you'd set off an airbag measuring the resistance as it's the impact sensor that triggers operation but I'd go at it carefully. If I remember from many years ago resistors come with accuracy tolerance bands, black, red, gold silver etc. As 2 Ohms is low I'd maybe check the actual resistor resistance. With a good meter like a Fluke.

Would rather kiss an airbag than bite a steering wheel tbh.

Remember to subtract the resistance of the test leads, even quality leads have a low resistance that will give you an error when measuring low resistance.
Touch the two leads together first and allow the meter to settle and you can then get a reading to subtract from your final measurement.
My fluke leads are about 0.3 ohms, some cheaper meters will bell out at up to 2 ohms.

Agree that it is unlikely that measuring the resistance of an airbag will set it off, but I still would approach it very carefully.

I found this interesting forum post on the subject well worth reading... http://uk-mkivs.net/topic/27797-mythbustersairbags-and-multimeters/

Sundance

SundanceUK wrote:

John and Sue wrote: Aha, with it now: the airbag is gorn and the resistor is a dummy load. Unlikely you'd set off an airbag measuring the resistance as it's the impact sensor that triggers operation but I'd go at it carefully. If I remember from many years ago resistors come with accuracy tolerance bands, black, red, gold silver etc. As 2 Ohms is low I'd maybe check the actual resistor resistance. With a good meter like a Fluke.

Would rather kiss an airbag than bite a steering wheel tbh.

Remember to subtract the resistance of the test leads, even quality leads have a low resistance that will give you an error when measuring low resistance.
Touch the two leads together first and allow the meter to settle and you can then get a reading to subtract from your final measurement.
My fluke leads are about 0.3 ohms, some cheaper meters will bell out at up to 2 ohms.

Agree that it is unlikely that measuring the resistance of an airbag will set it off, but I still would approach it very carefully.

I found this interesting forum post on the subject well worth reading... http://uk-mkivs.net/topic/27797-mythbustersairbags-and-multimeters/

Sundance

An excellent point about lead resistance Sundance: should have remembered that Doh! Tbh, most of my Fluke work nowadays is voltage and continuity, so lead resistance not so critical.