Adding an airbag to a car?

Pilky01

Pilky01

Pilky01

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Joined
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My farther has bought an old banger (corsa, diesel) and it has no airbags. He wants to fit a drivers airbag to it. Would i just be a case of fitting a new steering wheel with a built in airbag? He wasnt sure if it was sensors that triggered the airbag or the force going up through the steering collumn.

He is a trained airplane mechanic so he should have no trouble fitting one if its possible.

Thanks.
 
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Lots of sensors, it's really not an easy thing to do, from what I've been led to believe.
 
i believe they have a complex giroscope type thing to sense how bad the impact is as triggering the airbag at low speed can cause more harm than good. so you would need everything from an airbag equipped model , sensors wiring airbag, fuses etc
 
Why is he so concerned about having an airbag anyway? It's an old banger corsa, he might have the 'comfort' of a useless bag blowing up in his face and deafening him in a hard accident, but he'd probably still have broken legs trapped under the column.
 
Jon Frost said:
Well it would be possible, just very costly and might not work.
So, don't do it I think is what is trying to be said.
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No, it's not possible. His 'farther' doesn't have the R&D budget to develop the accelerometer positions and controller instructions tailored to his particular car. To engineer them I suspect he would need to crash it first, hence, it's impossible. Think about it....do you see 'Aftermarket Airbag Kits' in Halfords?
 
Akira said:
No, it's not possible. His 'farther' doesn't have the R&D budget to develop the accelerometer positions and controller instructions tailored to his particular car. To engineer them I suspect he would need to crash it first, hence, it's impossible. Think about it....do you see 'Aftermarket Airbag Kits' in Halfords?
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But he probably could buy all the stuff Vauxhall paid the R+D costs for from another trim level/one that had it as an option as I'm guessing Corsas did have airbags available. If you got all the stuff off an existing car to transffer would that work, I'm not sure?

Waste of money either way though :)
 
Indeed. I don't know when airbags were introduced on the Coarsa. I'm assuming 'old banger' would date it to before then.
 
I'm sure I saw a TVR a while back which had been fitted with an Airbag as an aftermarket thing, wasn't cheap though if I remember correctly.

Btw, does anybody know what happened to the guy buying the Cerbera on here? Was looking forward to seeing more of that :(
 
I would have though a particular model of Corsa would have either had an airbag, or not, they're not usually options. Therefore it's not possible without spending an enormous amount of money.
 
i thought older airbags were self contained units, there were no sensors or fuses or wiring or relays or ecus - it was a purely mechnical device. So retro fitting one by simply changing the steering wheel is easy enough.
 
GeX said:
i thought older airbags were self contained units, there were no sensors or fuses or wiring or relays or ecus - it was a purely mechnical device. So retro fitting one by simply changing the steering wheel is easy enough.
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What activated them? (serious question, if there was no sensors etc?)
 
TaKeN said:
Pretensioners on the seatbelt?
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By that do you mean the bit which stops you moving forward if you move too quickly?

If so, that sounds rather dangerous as the amount of times i've managed to do it just by moving forward to quickly for whatever reason!
 
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