Porsche Enthusiasts Club Forum

From Sunday:
Sorted steering shaft but have a PITA to deal with on the airbag light which is back on.... and no matter how many times I reset it, there it is saying "front left crash sensor or driver firing".... anyone know any tricks on where this sensor is as I'm staring at an MoT fail in the morning which is **** annoying

Have been to check said front left sensor and cable and all seems perfectly insulated and intact. Can only assume that I have disturbed the steering wheel airbag and associated bits when sorting steering shaft as it did move the shaft in the firewall bearing a touch...

From Monday:
Took it in for MoT and explained the airbag issue. Also took my laptop and 19pin OBD1 for them to have a look and get it sorted. They said their £5000 bit of kit will be fine and don't need my laptop or cable to look at this. I stressed that its a 19pin OBD1 but he was confident in his £5000 kit.

Just had the phone call "we don't have the plug for your car Sir".... so the MoT has been cancelled for today.

So, I'll fix it this week and book in for next week. Good job it doesn't expire until the 6th of May....

From today:
Took steering wheel off tonight firstly to put it back on the right way up but mainly to check the airbag connections and steering column. Found a rather exposed wire for the horn which seemed to have caught the insulation on the airbag wires. Insulated the airbag wires and made new connection for horn lead - but to no avail in sorting the problem.





Down to the front left sensor in the passenger footwell... Undid the connector to now get two error msgs which is pretty much what I expected.



The first msg (#21) is the one that comes up all the time, the second (#11) as a result of unplugging the sensor. On clearing the codes, we get the all clear....



Downside is, it doesn't stay that way....

Process of elimination (if the sensor isn't there it can't short or fire a circuit driver) suggests that the error #21 isn't a sensor fault but is a wiring fault.

Given this reoccurred after work on the steering shaft/ column, I think that's where I should be looking....

Off to Maplins for a 3ohm resistor in the morning to eliminate the wiring from the steering column upwards.....

Does that sound like a plan? Or am I barking up the wrong tree? Any other suggestions?

Did you allow the steering wheel to rotate while the shaft was disconnected? If so, you might have buggered the clockspring. Check for continuity through it.


.......of course if the bulb were to fall out of the warning light.......

I pretty much kept the wheel in the dead ahead whilst doing the shaft but yes, it could well be the clock spring.... I'll check continuity tomorrow...

Whilst it seems to be a sealed unit, any ideas if its serviceable?

The bulb could certainly fall out... or a resistor could fall in

Not much help I know, but the airbag light came on on my 968 recently, so I assumed that the resistor I had used when I removed the airbag wheel and replaced it with a CS wheel had failed.
I took the car to my local indie and was quite surprised when his Durametric kit showed a fault code for the passenger side airbag which has never been fitted to my car. He cleared the fault and so far the light has stayed off.
Don't know why my car should show a fault for something that has never been there though.

There is a Porsche airbag delete kit (a connector and a loop of wire) for the 968 apparently, but I just have a resistor on mine.

Thanks Simon! It sort of confirms my suspicions that its an erroneous error but that could be harder to resolve than an actual one....

On my way to Maplins later for a 3.3ohm resistor and will check out each part of the circuit this evening....

Airbag systems are very sensitive to resistance in the connectors to the airbag squibs etc. Quite often, simply disconnecting and reconnecting the connector to the offending component is enough.