Hello all! Have to write here because I did buy a reconditioned BMW M steering wheel with an Airbag from Romania. Seemd like a really trusworthy seller with ~1500 feedbacks and 99.8%. The steering wheel was really nice quality job, but the airbag is totally different thing. I got suspicious when I saw small cracks on the airbag cover, so I took the cover off(small clips, no need to break anything) and the bag istelf was like an old potato sack. It was squeeze in under the cover, not nicely folded like from factory, it was dirty, and on the inside was debris and trash an from explosion.
There is two thing that can have been done, maybe they has added a new explosion charge from another airbag(same item in many steering wheel models), or they have soldered an resistor to fool the airbag light in the car. I don't wan't to test if it works. Either way, this kind of recondition would not be leagal in my country, either would I trust such an ghetto mod.
Anyway the seller would not accept any kind of refund or return, and now ebay has also solved this case for the sellers benefit. They say I can not return the item as it's not in same shape as recieved. I can pack everything back under the cover no problem, but trash is trash. I can't make it be a new airbag, because this is what I recieved.
What is your thought on this? Is this kind of action acceptable? What to do?
I have been designing airbags for 3 decades.
I can't tell if the airbag was deployed or not. The picture of the bag pulled out of the module is not clear. And, not all airbags are neatly folded. There was one design that just gets scrunched up. But if it was deployed, then both the inflator and the cover have been replaced.
The inflator (what people here are calling the "charge") looks like it is live, and has NOT been deployed (fired). The cover of the airbag module would have been torn open if the bag was deployed.
At the very least, it looks like the inflator may have been replaced for some reason. There was a news report late last year that said NHTSA had found out that some BMW airbag modules had the inflators replaced, and they had to be added to the arbag recall as a result.
The damage that can be seen on the cover (small cracks or slits) can happen if the module is not properly stored or handled, or not properly packaged for shipment (basically, if it gets beaten up). I found a picture online (see below) that shows what this type of airbag cover would look like if the airbag had deployed through the cover. The cover in your pictures does not have enough damage to have been through a deployment.
No matter what the story here, this airbag is not safe to use or to have around.
FYI, no matter how much of a Car Guy you are, It is not safe to dismantle an airbag if you don't know how that particular one should be handled.
DO NOT throw it in the junk bin. It's dangerous and it needs to be taken to a dealer, who should either have a specially trained mechanic who can deploy it, or who can send it back to the supplier. In Europe, they are required to recycle these, so there is a process in place to deal with old airbag modules.
