If your car’s airbag light is on, it means the airbag control module has detected a problem. The good news is that you can usually reset the airbag control module yourself, without taking your car to a mechanic. In this article, we’ll show you how to do it.
Today we going to show you how to clear the crash data from your SRS airbag computer or How to Reset Airbag Control Module after a collision. So let’s say you’ve got into a collision and your airbags inside have deployed. So what happens is your airbag computer sets a hard code that cannot be reset with special tools, and it must be replaced. So let’s say you’ve decided to rebuild the car and you’ve replaced the airbags and all the sensors.
How to Reset Airbag Control Module
In this process, we’re gonna need to hack this computer, clear the memory and replace it with version data with the crash data stored inside of the computer. So, this will not require you much complex process to follow.
Step 1 Disconnect the Airbag Computer:
The first step is removing the battery and other connections from the Airbag. To do that, you have to locate that. The airbag computer is located under the dash over here with those yellow connectors are so you pretty much have to remove the bottom half of the dash in order to get to it.
It’s always very important when you were working on the airbag system to remove the negative terminal of the battery and wait about 2-3 minutes for the Airbag system to discharge. So here is the airbag computer removed from the vehicle.
Step 2: Remove the Screws of Airbag Computer
We have to disassemble it by removing these 4 screws from the bottom. When the four screws were removed. We can remove this bracket and then, the actual circuit board for the computer. So this airbag computer is responsible for controlling the restraint system in your car which includes the airbags.
All of the airbag sensors, side airbags, seat belts, pre-tensioners, etc. are open now. You will see a small 8 pin sensor here. This is called the EPROM chip which stores the crash data information after the vehicle’s airbags have been deployed.
Step 3: Hook up this chip and connect the serial port
Now we have to hook up to this chip here and see if we can erase the crash data from it and reset the airbag computer in order to connect the EPROM to my reader. You have to solder some hookup wire to the EPROM reader.
Here is the image for you to understand the connecting process and making the circuit for you.
We’ve got a couple of lines here that come off from the serial port and they go through some 4.7 K ohm resistors and then they run in parallel hereto. These 5 Volt Zener diodes and then it goes out to the chip over here on this side we’ve got pins and pins five that go to 5 volts and ground respectively.
Step 4: Connect to Computer
When the circuit is set up, you have to connect the wires that lead over to the serial port. And then connect the hookup wires that go from the dip socket on the EEPROM reader over to the airbag computer. In EEPROM, you will get 5 volts coming from the power supply of the computer.
In order to read and write from this EEPROM in the circuit, we’re going to need to shore up the crystal. So one thing you may do here is to wrap a little wire around the two leads so that short sit out.
Step 5: Go to The Computer Screen
The software Pony Prog you may use to complete the rest of the things. It’s a serial device programmer. What you have to do is first go over to the setup and make sure it’s set up to read from the serial Port SI Prag i/o.
Then click “Probe” to make sure that my device is working OK. Then you may go over to the device menu and select a microwire EEPROM 9356 which is the closest to the L 56 EPROM chip on the airbag computer.
Now we can click here where it says “Read Device” and that’ll dump all of the contents of the EEPROM chip on the airbag computer onto my screen.
Now the information stored on this computer here includes things like vehicle RPM, speed, airbag information as well as seat buckle information at the time of the collision. Now law enforcement officers can decode this and use this against you when investigating. Collision when the airbags have deployed.
Step 5: Copy a fresh Airbag Data to the Old one
So in addition to the old computer with Crush Dad on it, we have to take a clean computer that didn’t have airbag deployment and we have to copy that data and compare it to the crash data to see what’s going on.
Now you will see highlighted off all of the areas where the data has changed. Most of us have no real idea of how to decode this, So what we can do is change all of these values so they’re equal to what’s in the virgin dump, and then right this dump to the crash computer to see if I can clear it.
You will find there is the version number that you have to be writing to the chip. You just have to click right and click yes. And confirm that the rate was successful. So now you can remove the wire that shorts the crystal out and disconnect my chip from the EPROM reader paired.
Now you will get wires all bundled up because it still debugging. You have to try this in the car.
Step 6: Re-Install Everything
Alright, so now you have got the cleared airbag computer into the vehicle. You have to plug that in and then just tuck that behind the gas pedal there. Now you have to replace the battery log onto the battery and start the vehicle.
And you’ll notice that the airbag light goes out after six seconds, which indicates that the airbag system is functioning properly.
Conclusion
If you’ve ever had an airbag go off for no reason, or if you think your car has been in a collision but the airbags never deployed, it might be time to check out how to reset the Airbag Control Module. The module is responsible for deploying the airbags when needed and can malfunction without warning.
It’s important that anyone with these concerns gets their car serviced as soon as possible; otherwise, they may end up injured during another accident because of this faulty system. Although this article does not cover all aspects of automotive repair, we hope it provides enough information on what could be wrong so that someone will feel comfortable taking their vehicle into an auto shop for service before something happens again.