After having lurked here for the past few months I now have something worthwhile to contribute. So here's my first post

I bought a 2002 Suzuka Blue in September of this year. The car has been fantastic until last week when I had a passenger airbag switch installed. As honda shows no interest in doing this sort of work I contacted Sensible Solutions (http://www.airbagonoff.com)who specialize in this sort of work. They have a national network of installers and will come to your home or office to do the install.

An Installer came down on a Sunday and installed the switch with no apparent issues apart of damaging a dash panel (they said they will pay to replace this).

Two days later I'm driving home from work and all of a sudden the engine dies. Luckily I am able to coast over to the side of the road. But now the engine refushes to fire up. It turns over fine but will not start.
I call out a flatbed tow truck who tows me to a dealer close to where i live. While the tow truck guy is getting the car off the truck he tries to start the car and it starts fine.

I leave the car with the dealer to check out and of course they find no problem
There are no error codes in the system. So I drive the car home (In an ice storm ) and it seems fine. This is only a 3 mile drive mind you.

So after the ice has gone away I decide to take the car out and make sure the problem has gone away. 5 minutes later the engine dies again.
I'm just about to call a tow truck when I manage to get the car going. I get it back home and call the dealer. They say bring it down. I go out to start the car and again it refuses to fire up. So I decide to try wiggling some of the wires under the dash and suddenly the car starts. I manage to get the car to the dealer using this technique when it stalls. I show a mechanic what i did and leave the car again.

An hour later they call me back and ask who installed the airbag switch. I tell them who and they say that the switch was installed incorrectly Apparently the srs system shares a wire to the fusebox with the fuel system. The switch was hooked into that wire and was overloading the fuel system causing it to cut out. The dealer rewired the switch correctly giving the srs a dedicated wire and fuse to the accessory plug.

Now my car is back to normal and works great again. So far Sensible Solutions is not currently being very cooperative about refunding the costs of the rewire. I am waiting for their technical guy to contact me back. He had said he wanted to contact the honda mechanic who did the rewiring. He didn't seem to understand how the switch could be overloading the system. After having given dealer details to him 5 days ago I still haven't heard anything.

So the moral of this story is :

If you are planning on having an airbag switch installed ask some very hard questions to the installer on exactly how they are going to wire the switch.

If you already have a switch installed then i would suggest getting it checkedout to make sure the same problem doesn't happen to you.

 

This will probably be a dumb question so I apologize in advance......

Why install ain air bag switch? What are the benefits/disadvantages of having one.

The only think I can think of is when you have little children as passengers. But no pun intended here, who would haul little children in their s2k while driving at speeds in which you run the risk of needing the air bag.

Just questions, that's all......thanks...

 

who would haul little children in their s2k while driving at speeds in which you run the risk of needing the air bag.


what if i'm picking up my little bro at school and get in an accident (i.e. i'm driving 15mph and get rearended by a moron doing 50mph)?

airbags aren't just for when you're a moron and rearend the car stopped at the red light you didn't see

they're also for those on the receiving end

 

I had it installed because I have two small children (3 and 7) and on occasion i need to drive them in my car. Normally the airbag is left on but when they are in the passenger seat i turn the airbag off.
By the way other manufacturers provide switches from the factory (miata) and some have weight sensing stuff that won't deploy the airbag unless a certain weight is in the passenger seat (bmw, mercedes)

 

Airbag sensors are only in the front of the car, and would only deploy in a front end collision. If you were rear-ended they wouldn't deploy.

 

True but the same thing applies. The original question was why have an air bag switch because who would be foolish enough to drive fast with small children. First an airbag will go off at about 10 mph and an airbag can kill a small child. Second, you can be driving 5 and somebody doing 50 hits you head on.

I guess the person who asked the question never puts his seat belt on if he's driving slow. Dumb!

 

rback,

Something doesn't sit well with me on the mechanic's explanation, and I would tend to agree (at least for the moment) with the Sensible Solutions guy. Installation of a simple switch cannot overload a circuit. In simple terms, the switch does nothing mroe than make or break a connection semi-permanently. So, when the switch is 'on', it's as if the switch was never there, and the wire runs from point A to point B. When the switch is 'off', it's as if the switch was never there, but the wire is also disconnected.

Can anyone confirm/deny the attachment point of the SRS and fuel filter being on the same fuse? This alone sounds like a REALLY bad idea, and not one I see any auto manufacturer making...if the fuel pump shorts, your airbag will fail. Even if they WERE attached to the same fuse, my argument above still holds.

Either the Honda mechanic wasn't being completely honest (he can get money from you doing the work and doesn't have to claim it as warranty work), or there's more to this "switch" that is not being explained.

Oh, BTW...you can easily break a bone in a 10 mph accident, and I would hardly consider that excessive speed. There is NO such speed that an airbag should NOT be considered. Say you're stopped at a stop sign and some inattentive driver crosses the center line at 15 mph hitting you head on...a small child could be killed by the airbag. Of course, I also hope you are paying attention to the fact that infants and very young children should never ride in the front seat of a car, regardless of whether or not that vehicle actually HAS rear seats. The S2000 is not a baby carrier, regardless of how safe we all feel we drive.

 

I agree with Dan that the Honda dealers are less than honest with repairs sometime. One guy I know had me install a VAFC for him this summer. Everything was fine until a few weeks later his Vtec stopped kicking in. I re-checked all the conections and settings and found NO problems. The dealer looked at it and told him that it was wired wrong and that they would re-wire it for $165!!! It all turned out that he needed to reset his Maintenance light!!! As soon as he did that, Vtec was working fine. So, I ask, what was the dealer planning to do for $165 and how did they come to the conclusion that is what it needed? Thiefs....

IMHO...F' Honda Service!!

 

Well the evidence points 100% to the airbag switch installation:

1. I buy the car in September and drive the car with no problems. I had never been to the
dealer before this problem happened.

2. In December I have an airbag switch installed.

3. Two days later my car starts stalling and won't restarts until i wiggle some of the wires
under the dash.

4. Dealer finds that the fuel system is shutting down and rewires the switch and srs to its own fuse.

5. Car now works perfectly again.

Obviously the switch install somehow causes the fuel system overload. It was probably was installed incorrectly and caused a short somewhere.

The point is that the airbag installer screwed up and needs to reimburse me for the cost
of the rewiring. So far they are avoiding contacting me.

Also I do not drive with kids in the car everyday. The family car is a Volvo V70. A very safe car to transport my children in.

BUT there are times when I do need to pick up one of them. So quit the preaching about
never driving with kids in a two seater car. Do you really think people don't drive with their kids in a pickup (A two seater vehicle).

 

The evidence also pointed to the VAFC install....

1. Car works fine

2. VAFC is installed

3. Car won't go into VTEC two weeks later

Now, the dealer says it's wiring and wants to charge $165 to fix it. We can surmise that #4 would have been "dealer re-wires VAFC and all works fine", if we didn't know differently.

Were they going to wire anything differently? No, they were going to reset the MIL and say they did. All I am saying is maybe the dealer knows it is something very small and want to make a few bucks. Or, maybe it is the switch. Just telling the story to show that dealers can dishonest as well as incompetent, shown by the hoards of S2000 owners who have reported shoddy at best service. Personally, I will never trust my car to a dealer short of a motor swap, and even then it would probably be only due to warranty coverage.