What To Do Air Bag Light?

Shepherd · April 15, 2012

Hi All

The airbag light started to come on and off intermittently and then one day just came on permanently. What I gather from the internet is

1. Any airbag fault is covered till 5 years 70k miles. As I am on 98K miles and its 56 reg I am pretty much out of both and the last service I did myself so a weak point there as well

2. Normally its just a loose connector under the seat that is the problem. I took both seats off and checked the wiring and it looks fine to me and all connectors are fit well, nothing seems loose.

3. The next thing that usually goes wrong is the wiring loom inside the dash. Lexus charges £3k + to replace it with parts at around £2k + 1K for labour. No electrician out side dealer wants to touch this.

4. Its difficult to tell what is actually wrong with the airbag as just to get the diagnostics done is £150 and can only be done at dealer as the SRS diagnostics is special and normal code readers cant do it.

Other than go down the expensive route of lexus dealer, I cant think of any other way to get it fixed.

Any one has any other suggestions for me?

F.A. · April 15, 2012

We had a problem with the airbag light on our '03 Yaris T Sport. Toyota cleaned the connectors under the seat several times which cured the problem for a short period, before diagnosing the problem as a fault with the airbag control unit located in the dash just in front of the gear lever. They wanted over £800 to fix this problem. I took a chance and bought a second hand unit from a similar Yaris that was breaking on eBay (part numbers matched which obviously helped) for £50 inc del. and fitted it myself. This cured the problem. I know they are very different cars but just a thought

Shepherd · April 16, 2012

yeah..will book mine in and at least get the error codes. When the car was newer I was a bit afraid to touch it much, but now at 6 years old I am getting a bit relaxed about opening it up a bit and learning things or two. the other day I cleaned the EGR valve myself that I used to pay for to get cleaned. I am going to be doing the service again myself. Cant do the fuel filter though as I have heard it quite difficult to get to.

Shepherd · April 17, 2012

I had wiggled the connectors under the seats on Sunday. Today, after 2 days of doing that , the air bag LED went off by it self. I hope this stays this way, but not taking any chances I am going to get an MOT tomorrow. I think the MOT regulations have changed and now they check the Air bag light as part of MOT. Mine was due in late June, I hope they let me have one so early.

Shepherd · July 2, 2012

Just an update on this. I had got an MOT in April but soon after the Air bag light came on again. Turns out that if there is problem with airbag then the light wont go off until turned off by the dealer. So I bought my self a "toyota mini vci" cable from eBay hongkong for £20 and used the accompanying software to read the cars codes. The air bag codes were marked as history and not present. I cleared the codes and its been three days and no airbag light has come on.

Drogo · September 22, 2012

Thanks for updating this thread.

I have started to have the same problem so off poke about under the seats to fiddle with the wires.

I also have a problem with the built in sat nav that I've always put down to bad connections of the sat nav wiring.

The screen changes colours randomly but if I use the switches to move the drivers seat the screen will flicker and get itself back to its proper colours?

I'm hoping there's a link to the two problems.

samuria · December 23, 2016

Tip I picked up on YouTube which worked on my is 250 that was showing a SRS airbag warning light. Switch engine off and re-start, leave for 6 seconds and switch engine off. I continued with this procedure up to 5 times and light went off and has stayed off. Worth trying this process before you take it to the dealer for diagnostic check.