System Fault Airbag: 2005 Boxster S

[Vidal]

I sprayed the seat belt receptacles with contact cleaner and went through about 40 cycles of starting. The error code appearing on the dash is no longer coming on, but the airbag fault light on the dash still stays lit. Guess I'll stop by the dealer and see if they will clear it and see what happens, unless anyone else has another suggestion to try first.

Many thanks for your suggestions.

[Vidal]

Just an update for those intested. I brought her in to POTM to have that airbag fault diagnosed and cleared. They cleared the fault and the dash airbag light is now out. The diagnostic read indicated the cause was a low voltage situation. Turns out the battery did need replacement when it went totally dead while in winter storage, and that caused the low voltage situation (I had to jump the remote access connection to open the front boot to access the battery!). Now here's the kicker - that battery incident happened over 2 years ago! When I mentioned this point, they said "well, sometimes it takes a while for a problem to throw the code". I'm not sure I believe it......but at least the code is gone. We'll see if it comes back.

[Marty Kocse]

Just an update for those intested. I brought her in to POTM to have that airbag fault diagnosed and cleared. They cleared the fault and the dash airbag light is now out. The diagnostic read indicated the cause was a low voltage situation. Turns out the battery did need replacement when it went totally dead while in winter storage, and that caused the low voltage situation (I had to jump the remote access connection to open the front boot to access the battery!). Now here's the kicker - that battery incident happened over 2 years ago! When I mentioned this point, they said "well, sometimes it takes a while for a problem to throw the code". I'm not sure I believe it......but at least the code is gone. We'll see if it comes back.

Remember you could always swing by a DE tech session to have your code read and reset if necessary rather than make an appointment at the dealer for diagnosis and resetting.
Marty

[Vidal]

Great idea, Marty. Thank you for mentioning it!

[Vidal]

Well, while on the ride to Niagara Falls this past weekend with the rest of the RTR gang, the airbag fault went off again. So, there must be some electrical SNAFU that threw a fault code to trigger it. Marty, I'll be looking into your suggestion for taking a look at this at a DE tech session. I can't imagine it was the low power condition from a couple years ago as suggested by POTM, so it will be interesting to see if there is indeed some diagnostic info as to what is wrong. If this is going to keep happening, it's going to get rather frustrating!!!

[Vidal]

Update: I had someone with a Durametric scanner take a look at the air bag fault and it was throwing two codes, 801c and 80E1. The 801c is for a ground problem (which could be many things), the 80E1 code is a mystery (no info available on this one). He attempted to clear the codes, but the 80E1 never disappeared. The 801c code did disappear, but very rapidly came back up, so it's a "hard" fault. Off to the dealer....

I just heard from the dealer that the problem was localized to the control unit. Replacement is going to be over $1200! Plus, there was supposedly a history code for a wire harness problem, but that can supposedly be bogus. This was brought up as an alert to the possibility that if the wiring harness is faulty (although claimed to be extremely rare), it will be an additional $680 to replace that.

Now why couldn't this have happened when the car was still under warranty???? Damn....