Curtain Airbag Removal/Delete

[InstaGib]

Hi All -

How can I remove the curtain airbags (the airbag spanning from the C-pillar over the doors into the A-pillar) in a way that does not throw a light on the dash or OBD-II code?

I'm taking another step towards dedicated track build, and I'm running into some issues while preparing for safety install. I'm opting for a custom weld-in half cage, and am currently removing everything that might be in my fabricators way. This looks to include the curtain airbag. From what I'm seeing, it will prevent us from getting the main hoop as tucked to the roofline as possible and also interfere with the airbag in the event of a deployment anyhow.

I've seen plenty of guides on doing a similar task for the seat and steering wheel airbags, which I will also be doing. My main concern here is that for at least the next year or two I'd like to keep the car registered on the street, to make getting to/from local events easier. Therefore I need to keep any dash lights at bay. I've considered just pulling the SRS module, but I'm sure that would put a litany of codes into the main ECU.

Thanks in advance for any input, I've tried searching the forums/youtube/Reddit and just had no luck so far

[InstaGib]

Okay, I figured it out through some research, some guessing, and some can-do attitude.

For anyone that may be needing a similar solution, here's what I came up with:

From various sources, it seems like 2.2Ω - 3.3Ω is the sweet spot for fooling the airbag module. In the front seat this is rather straight forward - just shove the legs of a resistor in the plug. For the curtain airbags though, this is a bit more complicated. The plug the side/curtain airbags use is different, and has a substantially bigger hole in it for each prong of the male plug. By using various stud earrings that were around the house, I determined that each prong in this plug takes an 18ga conductor. The resistor alone will not work, it just rattles around and doesn't make consistent contact.

So with this info, what do we do? Well, there's actually a quite nice off-the-shelf solution made by Ling-Labs that I found ( Link Here ). To be clear - I did not use this, and have no history or experience with this brand. At $20/pc (you'll need 2, so it looks like $18/pc currently) it's a bit steep, but honestly I really like their solution. I unfortunately am in a time crunch and can't wait for shipping, but I had planned on making a similar solution myself in CAD and printing it. That is, until the extruder on my printer exploded. So that experiment will need to wait until I get the printer patched back together. Stay tuned I suppose.

Now, onto what my actual solution was. After finding that the plug prongs were 18ga, I went to my local hardware store and bought some 18/2 solid core wire. I bought 10ft, but you could get by with 6" honestly. It's cheap though, so nice to have around. I opened this up, and took the individually insulated wires out. Then I stripped about 1" worth, and soldered one wire to each leg of my 2.2Ω resistor. After this I put some heatshrink over the exposed bits, and then just stuffed it into the plug. There is no polarity to a resistor, so it really doesn't matter which way you throw it in. The wires should slide in with very slight resistance, and hold on even with some slight pulling. If it feels like it's binding or you're bending the wires trying to do this, stop. The loom from the car has very little to spare, so if you think you'll ever reinstall this you don't want to damage anything.

Here are some pics of what things looked like







After 20-30 miles I've had no CEL, no airbag lights, and I see no codes scanning OBD. Now that I know this is a viable solution, I plan on revisiting this to make it a bit more durable and hopefully put it away in some sort of 3d printed or aluminum enclosure. For the moment though, I have a viable prototype and can at least get it to my fabricator for its cage!

If anyone has any suggestions or is willing to share their solution, I'd love to hear it!

[Koba]

Good tip. Thanks!
I am kinda in a middle of the same thing.