 |
 | Home | Contact Us | FAQ | Search & Site Map | Link to Us |
 | Sign In | Join | Other 45 Sites in Network |
Car Forum / BMW Cars / April 2004Can airbag steering wheel be retrofitted to 89 3 series car?
A friend has a nice 89 BMW 3 series car, but it has no airbag. Can an airbag equipped steering wheel from a slighly later model be succesfully retrofitted? Thanks for any info. The wheel can be made to fit, but making the airbag deploy is another matter. Physically installing the wheel should not be that big of a deal. Making the airbag actually work is probably an insurmountable hurdle. You need the sensors that detect the rapid decelleration. You need the interconnecting wiring. I am not sure what all will be needed, but my initial instinct is that you can not do this very cheaply. It is probably cheaper to trade the car in than to retrofit it. Obviously, the trade in will be from a similar year as you are looking at for donor parts. > A friend has a nice 89 BMW 3 series car, but it has no airbag. Can an airbag > equipped steering wheel from a slighly later model be succesfully retrofitted? > Thanks for any info. > A friend has a nice 89 BMW 3 series car, but it has no airbag. Can an airbag > equipped steering wheel from a slighly later model be succesfully retrofitted? > Thanks for any info. Your friend is an idiot. Spend the money it would take to do this properly and *learn to drive* instead of *planning to crash*! Join BMW CCA at www.bmwcca.org and enroll in a handful of club driving schools. If, after taking at least three of them, your friend hasn't saved his/her insurance deductible at least once as a result of something he/she learned from us, lunch is on me. -- C.R. Krieger (Been there; done that) >Can an airbag >> equipped steering wheel from a slighly later model be succesfully [quoted text clipped - 11 lines] >C.R. Krieger >(Been there; done that) Is a skydiver an idiot for carrying a reserve chute? Sometimes bad things happen to highly skilled people and they need a little help from hardware. > >Can an airbag > >> equipped steering wheel from a slighly later model be succesfully [quoted text clipped - 14 lines] > Is a skydiver an idiot for carrying a reserve chute? Sometimes bad things > happen to highly skilled people and they need a little help from hardware. No, you don't need extra help from the hardware. It's already there. Far too many people are under the impression that if you bend your sheetmetal, you'll be seriously injured as well. That's simply not the case. Even old BMWs like the E30 (and the E28 I drive) have excellent body integrity and occupant crash protection. All you gotta do is *wear the belts* they provided and an airbag becomes a u$ele$$ and expen$ive explo$ive in the middle of your steering wheel. You're talking about a skydiver carrying an extra Cessna ... -- C.R. Krieger (Been there; done that) > A friend has a nice 89 BMW 3 series car, but it has no airbag. Can an airbag > equipped steering wheel from a slighly later model be succesfully retrofitted? > Thanks for any info. It is a good idea, but unfortunately this would be quite expensive because professional installation is a must, and the cost would be prohibitive. Don't work on an airbag yourself. >> A friend has a nice 89 BMW 3 series car, but it has no airbag. Can an airbag >> equipped steering wheel from a slighly later model be succesfully retrofitted? [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > because professional installation is a must, and the cost would be > prohibitive. Don't work on an airbag yourself. Not to state too much of the obvious here, but an airbag wheel is not all you need to equip a car with bags. You at the least need: 1) the wheel 2) the controller module 3) redundant crash sensors 4) all the wiring Most of all you need to crash a couple cars to find out when the airbag should go off! Airbag timing is a delicately calculated thing and is different for each car. I suppose you could craft an all-in-one airbag module that contains a g-sensor and triggering system, but at that point you are going through a lot of hassle to point an explosive charge at your face. Five-point belts would be cheaper and probably do more for you. > >> A friend has a nice 89 BMW 3 series car, but it has no airbag. Can an airbag > >> equipped steering wheel from a slighly later model be succesfully retrofitted? > >> Thanks for any info. I wonder does he just want a new wheel or the airbag? Because the wheel will fit. But retrofitting the airbag is, as everyone has pointed out, not a good plan. -Russ. > > > boeing377@aol.com (BOEING377) wrote in message > news:<20040426141923.19095.00000311@mb-m21.aol.com>... [quoted text clipped - 9 lines] > But retrofitting the airbag is, as everyone has pointed out, not a good > plan. Nope, not at all. If the intention is simply a different steering wheel, non-airbag equipped accessory wheels are a nice idea and much cheaper than airbag wheels. Ebay might have a few used ones. |
Reply to this Message |
 Sign In
 Join
 My Latest Posts My Monitored Threads My Blog My Photo Gallery My Profile My Homepage Start New Thread Enable EMail Alerts Rate this Thread
|
©2009 Advenet LLC Privacy Policy - Terms of Use
This website includes both content owned or controlled by Advenet as well as content owned or controlled by third parties.