Have I broken my car?

[darksprout]

Right here goes. I bought an RCD510 head unit from Ebay. I removed the silver plastic facia from around the old RCD300, unplugged the passenger airbag light, unscrewed the old radio and disconnected it. Had to split the 2 aerial connectors from their housing in order to fit to rear of new unit (didnt fancy spensing £15 on the adaptor!), then hooked up the new unit.
It works beautifully so massive :biglaugh:
However, whenever I turn on the ignition I get an annoying "bong" from the car and it tells me 'airbag fault' on the MFD and the light on the dashboard.
What does this mean?
Is the airbag still functional?
Will it cost loads to get fixed?
How did it happen?

Following on from the almost successful installation of the new head unit I want to update various features - bluetooth compatibility, aux input, etc. Is this the best place to ask for advice on that? i want to know if things are possible, and what parts I need.

Cheers, Steve

[patomlin76]

You've disconnected the airbag warning light and not reconnected it before turning the ignition on. Only way to sort it is to get the fault code removed via VAGCOM - either a local specialist will do it as a favour, or someone on here...

As I believe, whilst the light and fault is active, all airbags in the system are deactivated, so best get it sorted sooner rather than later. However it won't cost loads to fix, if anything - it's just a fault code reset.

hth

[hartry]

I have the VW Premium Bluetooth kit for sale in the 'for sale' section of this website if you are interested.

[hartry]

http://www.vwaudiforum.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=103559

[ToMBoY_C]

Airbags will still function fine. You get the error because you have unplugged the warning light on the trim surrounding the head unit.

Find someone with Vag Com and they will remove it in 2mins for beer tokens. Or go to a cheap garage and they will remove for around £15

Hope this helps ya :)

[darksprout]

Does anyone know of someone with Vag Com/VCDS in the South Cumbria area? My local VW dealer want £37+VAT to remove the error!!! It is booked in for Thursday morning as I dont think I have an option, but if someone is willing to help then beer tokens are definitely on offer :)

[esse_esse]

Indeed always remember to plug in the airbag light before starting the car during an install but as already said easy enough to fix

[darksprout]

Many thanks to all of you for spotting my newbie error! I cant believe that disconnecting a warning light can cause an error in the system whereby it needs hooking up to Vagcom or a VW dealer to rectify it. You would have thought that it could self reset after internal diagnostics run at startup :zx11:

Oh well, at the moment it is heading to VW to shell out way too much money to reset it. I am hoping that someone has vagcom in the South Cumbria area and would like a liquid thankyou :)

Oh well, lesson learnt here - dont unplug the airbag light again! Wonder how I go about changing the useless old ipod dock for an MDI interface without causing yet more issues??

Cheers
Steve

[patomlin76]

Even if someone here can't help, try an independent somewhere rather than the dealers - they would do it for far less cash...