Building new targa/road rally bmw which has 6 airbags. Has anyone got any ideas how to round airbag light? Cos it needs to come and then go off for mot. Cheers matt
Wed, 19/12/2018 - 21:02
#1
Airbag lights
Place a resistor in where the airbag would plug in. These should sort it : https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/100-mixed-PACK-of-AIRBAG-RESISTOR-SRS-mot-war...
Hello matt. I tried them on the puma and didn't work. Mot law's seem to be a lot harder for road rally cars. Heard of people getting a fail just for different wheels on a road car.
The MoT guidelines for testers in the latest manual are here:
https://www.mot-testing.service.gov.uk/documents/manuals/class3457/Intro...
and the previous guidance was here:
https://mattersoftesting.blog.gov.uk/when-is-a-modified-vehicle-a-rally-...
It seems slanted towards stage rather than road/targa cars but probably the best answer is to find a sympathetic tester who understands that allowances can be made for genuine competition cars. I believe there is one near to Chelmsford who a lot of our members use; if you are closer to me (mid-Suffolk) then I can advise of a suitable place.
As I read it, for air bags you should disable the light as well.
Thank you it seems to be a black area when it comes to road rally or track day cars for mot's.
Interesting - I think it is not really a black area though. I am reading this that the vehicle either needs to have the orginal saftey equipment (meaning 3 point diagonal belts and airbags) or an alternate safety system (meaning a cage, good seats, harnesses and no airbags).
If you stop and think it through it makes sense. Pesonally I never want to need my roll cage, but if I ever change my mind I will want it to work well....
As for the BMW airbags - do you also have one on the battery live cable in the boot? Certainly my E46 did - it is intended to blow the power cable off and isolate the battery...
A second thought is that you can just use timer relay to switch a lamp on and off. But (depending on the BMW) you may find that most of the dashboard runs from the CAN bus - meaning you cannot (easily) get to the appropriate lamp or cables. The resistor trick should work to convince the airbag control module that the airbags are there though (assuming that it has not been triggered - some need restting and others cannot be (easily) reset) - but you need to use the right resistor and that means measuring the ressitance of each set of airbags.
If you are not familiear with airbags though, please be very careful!! They are perfectly capable of causing serious injury when set off by accident. (Especially that one on the battery. Theres a hole in my workshop wall that looks exactly like a bullet hole - from where we set that off :-) In all seriousness It did go off exactly like a bullet - be careful.