[coffeebreakbios]

They are not gas, it is an explosive that detonates and makes gas very very quickly. My Avensis is having a new bag fitted next week. It is 18 years old but Toyota are still recalling the airbags. Fitting is free.
I think with time the explosive becomes less and less effective and due to the atmosphere around it weakens.

I agree, with the Fs and TFs being open tops, how many times has the steering wheel been soaked, water and dampness get everywhere.
Maybe there is a way to change the charge, but I wouldnt like to attempt the repair.

 

[JoCoLo]

That means the MOT for airbags in cars our age is totally pointless. I have suspected this was the case for a while now as airbags had a sell by date on them. Best not to rely on them going off I suppose.

 

[coffeebreakbios]

That means the MOT for airbags in cars our age is totally pointless. I have suspected this was the case for a while now as airbags had a sell by date on them. Best not to rely on them going off I suppose.

It looks as though the MOT rules on warning lights confuse the Mot testers, it seems like if your car is older than 1st July 2003 it doesnt matter if the lights are on or not, they cant fail the car.
But what is the meaning of RELETIVE lights?

The MOT failure rules on warning lights state: (taken from the Government website)

You need to inspect MIL and relative warning lights fitted to:

• petrol vehicles including hybrids with 4 or more wheels, not more than 8 passenger seats in addition to the driver’s seat and first used on or after 1 July 2003 Cheers Ray

 

[Man in the Car]

That means the MOT for airbags in cars our age is totally pointless. I have suspected this was the case for a while now as airbags had a sell by date on them. Best not to rely on them going off I suppose.

The reason for the expiry date was because (at the time) nobody was sure whether they would degrade or not, and had no long term data to give an idea of how long they would remain serviceable. Therefore, the original stated expiry data is pretty meaningless.

Interesting that someone is saying that the bags will now (after around 20 years) only partially detonate as I have yet to see any MG or Rover in scrapyard with a drivers airbag which has discharged weakly. All those where there has ben a detonation appear to have burst through the outer casing as they were meant to. I will take more notice in future to see if I come across any that have only partially discharged.

Airbags not being triggered at all has always been relatively common - the severity and direction of an impact is not always in line with the way airbags are triggered, and under such circumstances are unlikley to save any injuries anyway - they are deasigned to cushion the head in the event of a direct head-on impact, so usually don't get triggered if the main impact is off this line.

 

[deepfat]

Thanks Ray it's as I feared "new" actually means NOS which in this case is rather pertinent so until a viable option arises, if you have a light put the resisters in and drive carefully. The TF was pretty good at crash testing so safer than an early MG with no belts and they are still around.
When I first drove seat belts were not compulsory and no one bothered then it became law, now if I drive just moving the car I feel I will slide off the seat any minute, life is weird.

 

[MGB281]

A huge number of air bags were manufactured by the Takata Corporation in Japan who became insolvent due to the vast number of recalls when their air bags were deemed unsafe. The following gives an idea of the scale of the problem;
As of 2017, car manufacturers affected by this recall include Acura, Audi, BMW, Cadillac, Chevrolet, Chrysler, Daimler Trucks North America, Daimler Vans USA LLC, Dodge/Ram, Ferrari, Ford, GMC, Honda, Infiniti, Jaguar, Jeep, Land Rover, Lexus, Lincoln, Mazda, McLaren, Mercedes-Benz, Mercury, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Pontiac, Saab, Saturn, Scion, Subaru, and Toyota. If you read the list of manufacturers both Land Rover and BMW fitted Takata air bags so MG Rover might have as well, in which case there might be a recall. My wife's car had its airbags replaced last year due to the recall but from memory I think the handbook said that they should be replaced every ten years.
The propellant in some air bags (maybe all?) is ammonium Nitrate, commonly used by farmers as a nitrogenous fertiliser and was used by the IRA to make bombs. Adblue is another automotive product based upon a fertiliser, this time Urea is the source.

 

[Man in the Car]

The propellant in some air bags (maybe all?) is ammonium Nitrate

I don't think that is correct - it was the faulty Takata airbags that contained ammonium nitrate, and it was the deterioration of the ammonium nitrate (due to damp getting past old seals) that was the cause of the problem. Not a problem meaning they failed to discharge, or did so only weakly, but rather the opposite - the damp AN would ignite/ explode completely in about a third of the time it was originally designed to, with the result that it would actually destroy the airbag and send solid bits of it in all directions - the airbag, rather than cushion the occupants against impact with the dash/windscreen, was actually causing the most serious injuries (and in some cases actually killing the occupant).

Until Takata tried this disastrous experiment with ammonium nitrate in the late 1990s, the usual explosive was sodium azide, which is ignited to produce solid sodium and nitrogen gas. This was phased out and more recently there has been a switch to using principally guanidinium nitrate (which produces water vapour and nitrogen gas when ignited) or a combination of explosive chemical and compressed helium or argon (or a mixture of the two).

From early in 2003, MG Rover switched to using airbag systems supplied by Autoliv, who I think I am right in saying had no connection with Takata, but prior to that they fitted SRS systems supplied by Temic, who were connected to Takata and may have been supplying Takata manufactured air bags to Rover Group and MG Rover.

Certainly those cars built after the changeover won't have a Takata airbag (the Temic and Autoliv systems used slightly different connectors, so you shouldn't be able to interchange them without changing connectors, and I am unsure whether the Temic and Autoliv system components are interchangeable without changing the SRS ECU, or reprogramming it).

I am not aware of any MG or Rover driver suffering an abnormally violent airbag detonation though, it is more often the case that they complain that the didn't go off at all (but then, I think some people expect them to always go off when there are only designed to discharge in certain types of impact).

 

[jr795]

.

 

[Chris T]

The technician clearly hasn’t been close to an airbag when it has deployed!

 

[deepfat]

Thanks for that Man in the Car my car is Jan 02 so could be dodgy, anyone know how to tell? what's the difference in the connectors any pictures or is it something simple like the colour of the plug