Airbag Sensor broken... Wtf

I have a 2009 Tacoma and recently my airbag light on my dash just turned on out of the blue. So I got it checked by a mechanic and the sensor in my passenger and driver side airbag is shot. They checked and made sure all the wires are connected and it wasn't wet or anything and said it would cost over $800 to fix!!!!! I remember about 2 years ago I got a letter from Toyota saying there was something wrong with the airbags but the recall wasn't ready yet and to wait for a second letter, which never came. I called Toyota and there is no recall on the airbags. I'm just college girl and cannot afford to pay that much to fix the airbags. Am I the only one who thinks Toyota should be the one to fix this because it's their fault?? Has anyone else had this problem or is it just me?

 

I just backed into a stump a week or so ago which tripped my airbag light. On Saturday I was at the dealership and all it needed was a zero point re-calibration to clear the light. The charge wasn't horribly bad... $55 I think.

Might be worth having the dealership check just in case your mechanic jumped to the conclusion that it needs to be replaced with a re-calibration may be all you need.

Hope that helps....$800 seems like a lot!

 

There are no sensors in the air bags.

The sensors are located in various places around the front of the vehicle as well as in the Air bag ECU.

You don't have a very good mechanic. Please take it for a second opinion.

99 times out of 100, the only problem is a connector. The air bag system uses wires that have a very bright yellow sheathing on them. Its the only system that uses this color. Follow these wires around your vehicle and look for loose plugs.

Hint: The most common bad actor is the connectors under the driver seat. Check those first.

The air bag system is self healing. Once you get the bad connection taken care of, the dash light will go off by itself. No need to have a mechanic hook his computer up to your vehicle to clear the light.

Keep us posted.

 

And disconnect the battery when playing with the yellow wires.....

 

The recall you are referring to is probably the spiral cable recall. That could be the issue if your spiral cable is broken.

 

Due to various issues caused by me, my passenger set sensor doesn't currently work and that's caused the evil to turn off the airbags. Check to see if the seatbelt lights on either side react as the should (the dash light doesn't blink at you when your buckled and the passenger airbag is turned on if there's someone bucked in it). If either seat isn't recognizing the seatbelt it may be the small computer under the seat which you can get new on Amazon and plug in yourself in about 10 minutes

 

i had this issue in a bmw passenger seat. new cars have a sensor that detects whether there is a person in the passenger seat, and whether that person is an adult. if so, the car will deploy the passenger airbag in a severe collision. if there is no one in the seat, no deployment. also, if its a kid in a car seat, no deployment. that error means that the car will automatically trigger the passenger airbag in a collision, regardless. pretty sure thats the case with your car.

 

If the SRS System / Air Bag System is faulted for any reason it Will Not deploy the airbags under any circumstance.

 

There are many sensors involved with airbag deployment :

The passenger seat uses an " occupant detection system " depends on the year and cab configuration of the truck there are a couple of different systems. There is a black box up under your passenger seat that looks like this :

Your passenger seat uses a couple of different " sensors " that feed info to this little computer - First, some models have a liquid filled bladder in the butt of the seat and when you sit down the fluid closes a valve that closes the circuit and tells the computer someone is in the seat. Second, there are 4 seat position sensors that are part of the seat frame that very cleverly tell the computer how far from the dash the seat is and then the computer delays or speeds up the airbag accordingly.

The last common issue is that airbag squibs in the airbag itself can and do go bad. Bad squibs in the steering wheel in 05's and 06's is very common.

Now all of that being said - make the mechanic tell you the exact code that he is reading, that tells you exactly what and where the problem is. When you get that exact code let us know what it is. It will be a number something like " 51 " or " 32 " .

If the " is there an ass in the seat " passenger sensor or the seat position sensors are bad there is an easy $60 fix. There are companies people that make bypass modules for people that put aftermarket racing seats in their trucks and still want the airbags to work. The bypass module makes that little black box under the seat permanently think someone is in the seat and comes with a switch to manually turn passenger airbag on and off.

 

This is correct. I asked Toyota to clarify exactly that point just a few days ago. I had the airbag light on and wanted to make sure I wasn't at risk of it randomly setting off the airbag. They assured me that the opposite was the case and until it was fixed the airbag would NOT deploy even in the case of a collision.