rev up your engines, today I'm going to show you how to fix your car when your
airbag lights come on, now airbags can certainly save your life if you get in a
wreck, but if the system isn't working right it's not gonna save you and if
that airbag light is on there's something wrong with the system, now
they're pretty complicated systems, they have sensors in various places, so if you
get in a collision it tells the computer, the computer looks at various data and
then it fires the airbag to keep you from whacking into things, and since
modern cars have various airbag not just the one on the steering column, some of
them will have six or eight different airbags, it's a complex system when the
light comes on you have to scan it, now sometimes you can get lucky and use the
more basic scan tool on the airbag system, a really cheap one won't work
this is like a hundred and sixty dollar one, and it will scan most of the airbag
codes on this Toyota so we're gonna plug it in, it just plugs in under the dash
here, and now it's reading the codes it might take a minute or two, so since our
airbag light was on it should have an airbag code in here, as long as you've
left the car alone and haven't disconnected the battery or reset the
codes with another scan tool, the code should stay in memory and the computer
will sit it back out, there we go B 1610 front airbag sensor right hand
malfunction, now unfortunately that's where the fun begins, it's saying that's a
problem in the right front sensor that measures impacts, but it could be in the
sensor, it could be in a circuit, it could be computer it could be in the wiring
in order to check that out you need a really fancy scan tool like mine that
can do bi-directional testing, and an information system, check all the wiring
diagram, it can get really really complicated, not every cool cat can
figure that out, and anyways airbags don't work for cats they're too small, unless
of course you have a tiger in your car instead of a tiger in your tank, but
let's say you want to try to fix your own car, it does have the code for the
right front airbag sensor, I've been a mechanic for a long time 51 years and I
know in these Toyotas it's often these sensors that go bad and
trip that code, so if you ever get this code, that's a decent guess to replace
the right-front sensor for the airbag system, but of course then you got to
figure out where is the right front sensor, and first of all what is the
right front, now I personally think they should say drivers and passenger side, it
makes more sense, but when they say right from what they mean is, the vehicle is
faced this way, you're sitting in a driver's seat the right front is your
right hand side, so the right front where the left front would be the driver side
front on the left side, so anytime they say right or left of the car they mean
in position of the driver sitting in the seat, and not standing in front of the
car, then it would be backwards, now when you have to find the sensor itself now
you know it's on this side, it's on the right side sitting in the driver's seat
you can of course look it up online, you can google it, but in this case the
only place that sells the sensor is the dealer, so when you go to the dealer they
can show you on their little computer screen the location of the right front
sensor, you're buying it from them they can show you that, in this case it's
behind the grill, and if we look down there it is with the number one on it
as you can see on my replacements it's got that number one too, it's a simple
bolt off, bolt on procedure, since your bags work by electricity and explosions
we don't want to the airbags popping off so first we're gonna take off the
negative battery terminal, as the saying goes better safe than sorry
now my repair manual says to remove the front grille, but don't always believe
everything you read, in this case if you have a long extension you can get from
the top without taking all that crap apart, cuz when you look down there
there's just one bolt on one side and one bolt on the other which you can get
off with a really long extension and a ten millimeter socket, easy enough to do
there's one and there's two, then we unclip it and replace it, now
realize the clip itself is almost impossible to get off, the trick is you
have to pull up through the hole a little
then flip it upside down, because the clip is on the bottom side then the
yellow part, you have to stick a little pry, the tang is in and it pops right out, it's
impossible to film too but that's how it's done, here it is pulled off and if
you can look right down here there's the Tang and see where I have my little pry
bar, you pry under that Tang once you flip it upside down, and once your pry on
that Tang there, that releases the clip on the bottom and it comes right off, God
knows why they made it that way, they could have put the tag on the top
right, but no they had to put the Tang on the bottom so you got to take the bolts
off, flip the censor upside down at least is enough room for that, hit the bottom
clip with that little pick and then it pops right off, now likewise putting it
back in, I can't see anything I can't film it you can't even see it you really have
to feel it, you just want to make sure that you have the Tang on the bottom and
the connector Tang on the bottom, so that when you push it together blindly you'll
hear it click, so basically you're blindly wiggling sticking your hand in
the hole, you gotta get it until it clicks in, this is the hard part
god knows why they make these things like this, and you put the two bolts back
on make it nice and snug, make sure their snug, don't forget to put
the battery terminal back on get that nice and snug and don't forget to reset
the airbag codes, erase codes, yes erase codes
now as you can see the codes are gone, if you don't erase them odds are they'll stay
and you think you didn't fix anything, here we'll check ABS codes, now it's checking
the ABS codes and it says there's no code so it erased it, and then of course
pray like mad that it doesn't come back, because if it wasn't that sensor
it's the computer or the wiring and that's stuff that's gonna take a really
good mechanic to figure out, but on these Toyota's normally it's just the
sensors go bad things, hit them and they're in the front of the car
eventually they break, so the next time your airbag lights come on, why not
attempt to fix it yourself, so if you never want to miss another one
of my new car repair videos, remember to ring that Bell!