Air Bags Blowing with Static Electricity!??!!??!

[NuclearBacon]

The Seed of doubt has been planted......

.... ive never heard of it, but someone told me about how i shouldnt have an airbag steering wheel in a car not designed for an air bag. my 92 touring wagon came with the leather wrapped minvan style steering wheel, and i wanted to put a 2001 2.5 rs wheel in it, but it has an airbag, and mine does not.

when someone told me about it, i shrugged it off, but now, i'm thinking twice about it...anyone heard of this?!?! tell me im full of it!!!!

thanks!
Luigi

[ivwarrior]

While I've personally never seen it happen, I have heard that it can. Knowing that the service procedure to set one off (why you'd want to I don't know) says to wear eye and ear protection, I wouldn't take the chance in my car. Surely, you can easily find a steering wheel you like that doesn't have an airbag in it.

[NuclearBacon]

thats enough for me... time to get a 97 turbo legacy wheel. (minus airbag)

[magicmike]

I dont know of any static electricity that can reach 12 volts and have enough current to trigger the bag. I dont think its possible to happen in a car WITH an air bag system never the less a car not even equipt with one and the bag is just static in the car.

[evolutionmovement]

Static electricity can easily be thousands of volts, just very little current in usual observance. I don't know what it takes to set off the explosive charge for the airbag, but many an idiot making bombs or fireworks in a shed in the yard has Darwined themselves by not properly grounding everything from a static charge. That said, I would bet the airbag is very well isolated from potential false triggers. Maybe you could remove the mechanism to be safe, I wouldn't know how to do that, but I'd make sure I was grounded or at least not on either end of the wheel if I were to try.

[HellBinder]

your SRS wheel will be just fine.
We blow all the airbags out of partially deployed cars at my work, new guys at work get the job so everybody has done it, about 2-3 months of popping 10-50 bags a day, sometimes up to 300 when they clear out the inventory and unsold stock.
Ive used jump boxes that showd to be good on the voltage indicator, and tryed to set off bags and the gauge just bottoms out and nothign happens.
Ive dissmantled hundreds of passenger bags, pulling the argon/helium canisters out of them and using those to destroy partailly burnt bags. You have to be one unlucky bastard to set one off with static, it is very possable to do, but you have to be trying to do it on purpose.
When a bag is installed the SRS system has an inline power capacitor that will hold a 12-15v charge for upto an hour after the battery is disconnected, the system watches everything and the perameters all have to be met for a deployment, granted older 89-95 SRS systems all sucked b/c of their simplicity, the newer ones watch door ajar lights, seat belts, gear, speed deceleration, impact sensors, and ABS.
The two most dangerous bags are a Nissan sentra passenger bag and a 94-95 jeep cherokee driver bag.
The senta bag blows the steel backing right off the case when you set them off, rips the studs right off. the jeep bags are mechanicam enertia bags, i refuse to work on the jeep ones, cause their is a spring switch on the back of them, you hold it up and its armed, so if you where disposing of it you would tape the switch in the up position and throw it, when it lands it goes boom, but if you throw it too hard, it goes off in your hand.

You can actually pull the bag out of the back of your impreza wheel and still use just the cover. horn wont work, but if it makes you feel better.

[NuclearBacon]

great info. thanks!!!!!