Air Bag Life & Autocheck Beeper

[Robert Dalton]

Hi All,

Finally defeated the darn autocheck beeper in my
1990 Audi 100. I just popped the beeper off the
PC board that's part of the instrument cluster.
 While I was at it, I removed the two light bulbs
that constantly blink error conditions whenever
I hit a sharp road bump.  Peace at last.

I had been putting this job off for years because
of fear about the air bag blowing up when I tried
to remove it.  After disconnecting the battery
and power supply connector, I waited a couple hours.
 I then simply tried to treat it like the small
bomb that it is, always keeping my head back and
to the side when I removed it.  By the way, Audi
now claims the life of my air bag is 14 years from
date of production.  I called Audi Customer Service
1-800-822-2834, gave them my VIN number, and they
called back a day later with the infromation. 
They claimed the dealers should have known this,
but dealers like HBL in Northern Virginia are outrageously
expensive, very polite, and very stupid.  HBL actually
referred me to Customer Service, who then said
I should have called a dealer.  Ah, if Audi only
had as good a service network as they have cars.
 

While I had the air bag and steering wheel off,
I checked the resistance of the bag's spiral spring.
It was 0.6 ohms in mine, with a spec of 1 ohm.
 My light is starting to stay on longer (a couple
minutes), and I've heard the spring can be the
cause.  Hope this helps you do it yourselfers.

Rob


-- 
Robert Dalton
rpdalton at onebox.com - email
(703) 234-3969 x1020 - voicemail/fax



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