Lit “AIR BAG” alarm

[Salvador Alasco]

I have a 1993, 3.5L, V6 Dodge Intrepid. When I turned on the ignition yesterday, the “AIR BAG” alarm remained lit. The car did not have any accidents, its bumper was not hit/whacked, or anything, and the car is parked inside our garage. I disconnected one battery pole for a minute and then re-connected it in the hopes of re-setting whatever was stored in the computer but the indication remained lit up. What may have caused the alarm to light up ? Also, how do I check for fault codes with this car which is a 1993 model and not covered by OBD-II scanners ?

Topic

[Kevin Criswell]

Start with this,

See if your horn and any other steering wheel mounted controls work (cruise control).

One thing that will immediately reset an “air bag” code is a bad clockspring, a device that passes through the connection to the driver’s air bag and horn and cruise control controls.

Chrysler clocksprings are notorious for failure and when they fail they usually take out the horn switch and cruise controls ability to pass signals from the steering wheel to their modules.

[george gonzalez]

The good news is that the air bags themselves rarely fail, it’s usually the wires that have to undergo all those twists every time you turn the wheel. Unless you live in rural Iowa, you’ve been turning that steering wheel a lot.

There was even a recall of 1998-2000 dodges because the wires failed much too often.

I would get the twisty wires replaced. They’re often called the “clockspring” wires. You see in olden days there were these mechanical things called “clocks” which had spiral springs.

[Author]

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