I am working on my father’s 08 Toyota Camry SE (2.4L), over a decade ago I drove it through a large puddle and ever since then there have been three airbag lights on; airbag light on cluster, passenger occupancy Airbag On and passenger occupancy Airbag Off
The dealership wants $180/hour to diagnose it but I’d love to get some ideas before going that route.
My uneducated theory is either that;
Water got on the front bumper impact sensor, caused a short that fried the module, but why are the occupancy lights on when you plug the harness in (maybe those lights are powered through the harness so when it is plugged in, they receive power but no instruction and default to on?)
Water got on that sensor and the module interpreted an accident but didn’t deploy, and now the module needs to be reset? If this is the cause though, would I not be able to communicate with the module still or would it allow communication and give some info on why it needs to be reset? I assume you’d still be able to communicate with it.
Main takeaway is that when the harness is plugged in the occupancy lights are on so I assume the module has power and ground (unless power just passes through to the lights), and that I can’t communicate with the module which leads me to believe the module is fried and needing replacement?
On the plus side I’ve left it unplugged so those two lights aren’t illuminated up by my windshield, so I’ve made it safer and saved lives so I’m basically a Doctor
Now I expect at least one comment telling me not to mess around with airbags and take it to the dealership, and I may do that on some days off once I’m cashed up from this job but I’m also doing alot of fixing and diagnosing issues on this car to keep me busy after work (10 days straight industrial construction away from home) so I’d like to see if I can figure something out on my own.
I doubt it is a fuse as what I can tell from fuse diagrams is that both the SRS and Occupancy sensors are shared with critical engine fuses so that they can’t be easily disabled.
I’ve also tried the popular trick of unplugging the harness under the passenger seat and plugging it back in, (right when I unplugged it at work my h2s monitor started going off because it was choked against my coveralls and I thought it was the airbag system beeping at me and nearly shit my work pants)
The car is being driven around without working air bags as far as I can tell. The is a good auto upholsterer on YouTube that will not remove a seat to recover if it has the yellow connection. Recovers it in place. Says if you disconnect the yellow connector, the dealer needs to reprogram the air bags again.
That scan tool should be sufficient.
For self-diagnostics/flash codes: connect a wire from pin 4 to pin 13 of the OBD II connector, switch the ignition on, wait 60 seconds and count the SRS warning light flash codes.
Well I did the jump and as expected several lights were flashing such as ABS and the check engine and the cruise control, as for the airbag light it just remained solid
Did you count the flashes? If it is similar to how the diagnostic flash-code function works on my Corolla, the number of dashboard flashes (between pauses) can used to narrow down what’s wrong.
My Corolla doesn’t have air bags, so unable to be more precise how it works on your car. On my car the CEL flashes are what I have to count to determine the diagnostic codes. Hopefully @Nevada_545 will provide some add’l clarity.
Ask around to see if you can find anyone with a Tech 2 scanner. That’s Toyota’s proprietary scantool. The legit ones are very expensive. But there are other ways… Perhaps join a Toyota discussion board and see what you can find out about that. (It’s also called the “TIS” - which, I think, stands for Toyota Information System).
I ran across a post on a very local, non-car / non-Toyota discussion board recently where some Prius enthusiast spontaneously offered up help with Prius issues - just because he’s an enthusiast, I guess. Yours isn’t a Prius, but the Tech II doesn’t care which model Toyota it is. Ask around and search around.
Alright, I also found a shop that will diagnose it for $120cad so I might just get that done in a couple weeks at this point. I just went out and changed the passenger power window switch and the cruise control lever and taking off the driver airbag to get to the lever was sketchy enough that I don’t want to twelve too deep into airbag wires , even with the battery disconnected those things are spooky
Thing to remember is they operate with a capacitor which is an electrical storage device. Battery or no there is still power to the bags unless it is discharged or has been sitting for a length of time.
