Accidental airbag deployment
 

So yesterday I wired up my head unit to my passenger door airbag, thinking that the twisted pair coming from the door I was tapping into was the speaker wiring. As soon as the head unit sent power to the airbag it popped.

Is it safe to drive/power the car right now (without a passenger of course)? I just want to make sure that if I turn on the electricity there’s no risk of other airbags randomly deploying or anything like that.

Thanks

Looking at the 1999 wiring diagram (it’s newest I have handy) it looks like the side airbags are connected through a control module. By tapping into a twisted pair you directly powered one of the two igniters on the airbag and popped it. To me it seems unlikely to pop any other airbags at this point if they didn’t already pop when you had power on for the head unit. The state of the control unit won’t be known until you get everything plugged in again with a new airbag. My guess it’s probably ok.

That must have been quite the shock when the airbag popped. Are we going to see a thread about seat cleaning next? 😊


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Thanks for the detailed response! Yes it was extremely alarming and no luckily I don’t need to add seat cleaning to my new list of things to do, haha. I am glad to see that they still work after 23 years or so!

I ordered a new airbag and am working on getting a new door panel. I think I’ll just bring it to my shop before I mess anything else up again.

Since it’s my daily driver, I drove the car again this morning and you are correct nothing else happened except an airbag warning light.

When you say airbag igniter, is that built into the airbag itself or is it another replacement part I’ll need to purchase? As far as I can tell I can’t see anything else to buy except an airbag and door panel.

Thanks

The igniter is integral to the airbag.

Clearly it's integral... or the airbag wouldn't deploy. Did you mean internal? Or, is there an external ignitor? That could be dangerous.