Airbag and Pretensioner error light

[AlexHaden]

Evening, well. I see an expensive few weeks in my future.

Replaced the battery, as it was not holding much of a charge, but that didn’t solve the airbag light problem.

So, went and bought myself an autel AP200m, was only £50 on Amazon so thought why not.......

Have attached the diagnostic report, and it looks, well, expensive.......

BSI issue, engine ECU issue, airbag light issue, seatbelt not fastened ECU issue

Doesn’t feel like that’s been caused by my rubbish battery though, was thinking should I clear and see what happens?

Assuming if I clear the codes, they will come back if the fault remains? Don’t want to clear them if the garage needs to see them.

Best get saving I guess.......

Diag Report

[Missing Lincs]

Ii would certainly clear all the faults, many will be historic. See what returns ...

[AlexHaden]

Well, in a bizzare turn - I ran outside, dongle in hand, switched on the ignition, and guess what?

Not a warning light in sight, everything has mysteriously vanished.

Just been for a drive, good 30 mins, everything seems to be working (obvs didn’t crash into anything to test my airbags though...)

How weird is that! Didn’t even get to use my erase code function, but on a positive note, I know how much elyos fluid I have left, and how much soot is in my DPF

Thanks to everyone for trying to help me out, really appreciate it. If anyone wants me to try anything out on the AP200, let me know - not a bad bit of kit really.....

[AlexHaden]

...and the errors came back.....darn it...

Looks like it’s an intermittent fault, BCI unable to communicate with other stuff. Once I connect to the car, I can view the BCI, live data and all the other bits, so hoping it’s not a complete failure.

Going to try one last thing, BSI reset.

I can follow the instructions fairly easily, but on the disconnect the battery stage, it says remove the negative.

Can I remove the positive instead? Only reason I’m asking, is that the positive terminal is accessible, and has a clippy thing to remove, while the negative terminal appears to behind around other bits of stuff that needs to be removed first (who designed this thing!)

Or am I now better off taking it into the main dealer to look at, as doing a BSI reset won’t fix this type of thing?

[Ozvtr]

First up, I am very impressed with the AUTEL scanner you bought. Did you do some home work or did you just randomly pick it? Have you found any neat tricks it can do, like code keys? This is a limitation of a lot of scanners.

Yes you can just remove the positive battery connection. The most important thing is to wait 60 seconds between doing things. The network does some 'house keeping' before putting the system to sleep. Every time you shut the engine down or close the door the system attempts to shut down. If you open the door or turn the lights on or anything, it interrupts the shut down cycle. Normally it doesn't matter but for a BSI reset the system must have shut down first. Also, it needs to wake up fully before opening doors ETC.

I don't know much about the modern diesels but I would have a look at the AdBlue pump ECU connector. Most of your errors are associated with not being able to communicate with that ECU. It's a bit strange though. The system says there is a CAN error but the AdBlue ECU does not appear on the ECU lists? So is it on the CAN bus or not? (that's a rhetorical question)

The front passenger airbag deactivation switches have proven themselves, in the past, to be crap. Potentially one of the faults looks like that switch. You can remove the connector and short out the connector pins and see if the airbag light goes out.

[routemaster1]

First up, I am very impressed with the AUTEL scanner you bought. Did you do some home work or did you just randomly pick it? Have you found any neat tricks it can do, like code keys? This is a limitation of a lot of scanners.

Yes you can just remove the positive battery connection. The most important thing is to wait 60 seconds between doing things. The network does some 'house keeping' before putting the system to sleep. Every time you shut the engine down or close the door the system attempts to shut down. If you open the door or turn the lights on or anything, it interrupts the shut down cycle. Normally it doesn't matter but for a BSI reset the system must have shut down first. Also, it needs to wake up fully before opening doors ETC.

I don't know much about the modern diesels but I would have a look at the AdBlue pump ECU connector. Most of your errors are associated with not being able to communicate with that ECU. It's a bit strange though. The system says there is a CAN error but the AdBlue ECU does not appear on the ECU lists? So is it on the CAN bus or not? (that's a rhetorical question)

The front passenger airbag deactivation switches have proven themselves, in the past, to be crap. Potentially one of the faults looks like that switch. You can remove the connector and short out the connector pins and see if the airbag light goes out.

Pretty sure Adblue is a red herring. The car is a 1.6HDi from 2012, Adblue was not used in this engine until at least 2016.

[AlexHaden]

Morning - yes, elioys (if that’s how it’s spelt) not ad blue

Going to try BSI reset today.

Not sure about the key coding, but I’ll have a look and see if I can find it anywhere

[Ozvtr]

If you want to be picky, research shows it's EOLYS. EOLYS is added to the fuel to improve cleaning of the DPF. As a "fuel-borne catalyst", it aids in DPF regeneration. Whereas AdBlue is injected into the exhaust system to improve the catalytic converters performance (for the kiddies playing along at home).

If you want to substitute "eolys" for "adblue" the rest of my post stands.

However, I was wrong for bringing that up, it was not part of the topic. If you wish to pursue this engine error (you may not wish to) then open up a thread in the diesel area, please.

Now, back on topic (airbag)...

[AlexHaden]

It’s progress!

Did the BSI reset, and cleared the error codes. The only one that persisted was the airbag error light.

Will have to wait and see if the BSI/ECU communication faults happen again, but on the airbag.........

In sheer annoyance I tried to just push the roof console thingy, which felt a tiny bit wobbly and the lights flickered, so I pushed it a bit harder, and the error went away and the normal display came on.

Would that indicate that the airbag issue could be simply a loose wire?

[Missing Lincs]

Many electrical problems are down to loose wires or bad connections, however it's unlikely for airbag or restraint system faults.

Unlikely doesn't mean it's not possible, wires under seats get caught and contacts corrode.

You can try cleaning connectors, this can be as easy as unplugging and reconnecting a couple of times. Contact cleaner can also be used for good measure.

A WORD OR TWO OF WARNING when working on the airbag and restraint system - disconnect the battery before doing anything else.

You run the risk of upsetting the system or worse still, detonating a gas generator which is expensive and potentially dangerous.

Airbag and restraint faults can also be due to short or open circuits in the gas generators in the devices themselves. Essentially the airbag system is checking for the correct resistance in each circuit, so no shorts, open circuits and overall resistance within quite a close tolerance hence, potential problems from corroded connections.

I think it's already been mentioned earlier in this topic but the passenger airbag switch is a common place for problems so worth a look at.

If you disconnect the battery and do any work on the airbag system make sure there is no one in the car when you re-connect the battery and turn on the ignition for the first time.