After rounds and rounds with my dealer I found out that the reason my Airbag light is on is because a short in the wiring somewhere in the airbag system. I had all of the sensors swopped out so those are fine, but its just a matter of trying to trace down the flippin wires. Anyone have any advice? In my Hanes book it doesnt show a wiring diagram for the air bag system. Any advice is appreciated.

 

Does your cruise control still operate? (if you have it)
Most of the time it is the clockspring assembly behind the steering wheel that goes bad, causing the air bag light to come on.

 

Yeah all that works, the air bag sensor command module is giving me a fault code saying that there is a short somewhere in the system.

 

Only thing I can say about shorted wires is good luck....that's not being a wiseguy. I deal with that almost daily.... You have to have a good multimeter, and A LOT of patience. Unplugging the connectors to your bag or bags if you have two, the caddys I work on have an airbag module....or computer that is good about shorting internally at times making it look like a shorted wire. I'm not sure about the dodges...should have looked at the year model of your truck before....wait, is it a 1997? Anyhow, you would need a good schematic and you would have to ohm out wires from your module to each individual connector, one wire at a time and if each wires resistance is around .2 ohms it's good. Then you start to check each wire for a short to ground, short to voltage, which you would have to reconnect the harness to your airbag module, but do not connect the airbags and then key on and check for voltage on the wires......if you find nothing wrong with the wires it's gonna be a hard part...i.e, airbag module. I like the idea of the clockspring though, I remember doing plenty of those in my short time at the dodge dealer.

I'm sorry that I cannot give you any better info. Most of the time it is not a wire....unless something has been modified. Most of the stuff I find is either the airbag itself shorted internally, or the computer. Also could be a bad connector, loose connector terminals causing high resistance in the circuit.

Good Luck! You could also try here, www.flatratetech.com
I'm a member at that site and there are a lot of automotive techs on that site who work in the dealers and they are a good bunch of guys. I help out on the gm cars there at times. It's free and you can post your question and they will chime in with advise.....more than I can offer to you.

 

OH yeah, before you go messing with the airbags pull the fuses and wait about 5 or 10 minutes. We don't usually do this at the shop.....Lady Luck I guess, but it's a good safety precaution so the airbag don't blow in your face while your disconnecting them...

 

So I carefully replaced the clockspring and....The light is still on So far I have replaced the clockspring, and front sensor. Ideas anyone?

 

I would unplug the airbags before checking for shorts. If you connect you ohm meter to the system, it has enough current in the 9v battery to deploy the air bags. Good luck finding the short, we have breakout boxes at the dealer to help find air bag issues. What is the exact fault by the way? It could help in diagnosis.

 

I cant remember the code exactly but it is something like front sensor short.

 

put a piece of black tape over the light. problem soved!! sorry, i had to say it!!

 

Do you know where the air bag module is located?

 

If you can find the air bag module, disconnect the batteries and wait at least two minutes. Then disconnect the 13-way connector. The pins you will want to check are pin 5(light blue), pin 6(dark blue w/ light blue tracer), pin 12(tan) and pin 13(brown w/ light blue tracer). What you are looking for is continuity between pins 5 and 6 or 12 and 13, or between any of those pins and ground.

 

You need to monitor the system with the DRB. Unplug connectors until the code changes from "shorted" to "open", that will then give some sense of direction in which to go.