Replacing an airbag light fuse

mcnamarak

Hey all,

Can someone give me some advice on how to replace an airbag light fuse - the fuse is gone or going and causing a light to come on my dashboard. ive been advised my a guy i work with (job has nothing to do with cars may i say) to change the fuse as this should resolve in a cheap way before paying someone to do it...

Its a 2004 ford focus by the way.

langdang

In a lot of cases, when a fault causes the airbag light to come on, it will not go off unless turned off by someone with the right gear - usually a mechanic, but there's people on here with their own gear. So even if it is fuse related, the fault may need clearing anyway.

If the light is on/off/on/off then maybe you can get away without a trip to the garage if you can figure out the issue. The fuse location for the airbag system will be in your manual. Replace it with a good fuse of the correct rating, with the car turned off and keys out of the ignition.

In the likely event that it is not just a fuse issue, whatever is causing the Airbag light to come on should be storing a fault code somewhere - my recommended course of action would be to get fault codes scanned to figure out what the issue is.

Edit- I'm just an amateur - one of the pro's might be on to give a more authoritative answer later...

mcnamarak

langdang wrote: »

In a lot of cases, when a fault causes the airbag light to come on, it will not go off unless turned off by someone with the right gear - usually a mechanic, but there's people on here with their own gear. So even if it is fuse related, the fault may need clearing anyway.

If the light is on/off/on/off then maybe you can get away without a trip to the garage if you can figure out the issue. The fuse location for the airbag system will be in your manual. Replace it with a good fuse of the correct rating, with the car turned off and keys out of the ignition.

In the likely event that it is not just a fuse issue, whatever is causing the Airbag light to come on should be storing a fault code somewhere - my recommended course of action would be to get fault codes scanned to figure out what the issue is.

Edit- I'm just an amateur - one of the pro's might be on to give a more authoritative answer later...

Thanks for your advice - I going to try finding and replacing the fuse to see if this helps and if not then its off to the auto electricians i go!!

Thanks again

dr.fuzzenstein

I had an airbag light on an '02 Polo.
If it's not the fuse, the first thing to do before anything else is get a readout of the fault code, google it's meaning and that will also bring up other cases of that fault and what people did to rectify it.
In my case it was a faulty clock spring, the wire that allows the steering wheel to turn and maintains connectivity between the airbag and the car.
Because it is a constantly moving part, it is prone to break.
You can also measure across the terminals of the airbag, if you get 2 Ohm, it's good.
Here's a guide:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAklUlvAIrs

And once you've checked everything, you'll need to reset those fault codes, or the light will not go away.

langdang

Underseat connectors* and clock springs are the most common causes alright.

*common issue in hatchbacks/coupes that see a lot of seat movement, or in some cases can be cased by over enthusiastic hoovering under seats.