audi49

Thinking about getting an S2 or Turbo, most of which have airbags. What’s the thinking about airbags that are 30 years old? Less worried that they may not go off in an accident (my base model doesn’t have airbags so that’s my status now) but more worried that they could accidentally go off without an accident. I think officially airbags have a life limit. But practically any reason to worry?

thomasmryan

imho...random deployment commonalities have occurred with vehicles that are probably stored outside (corrosion related). honda, chevy, ect

https://www.nhtsa.gov/recalls/takata...increased-risk

if you fear it, pull the plugs and bulb.

audi49

Did a little research. Found the below informative article. More info probably than we ever wanted to know about porsche airbags. No suggestion to have to proactively change or disconnect the airbag or that there is any inherent risk in a old airbag.

Porsche Airbag Systems | Issue 179 | Excellence | The Magazine About Porsche (excellence-mag.com)

'We’ve never seen documentation from Porsche stating that any airbag system component, including the airbags, must be replaced at a specific time interval to ensure operation.'

Breakaway944

I disconnected my airbags for several reasons. First, airbags have a lifespan. Second, when airbags first came to America we looked at the European specs and thought they were too wimpy. We wanted our airbags to deploy much faster. Faster is better, right? Unfortunately not with airbags. The laws in the '80s started with you had to have airbags or automatic seatbelts. When we started getting airbag crash statistics we realized the airbags were killing people. This led to mandatory seatbelt laws - the seatbelt will keep you from hitting the killer airbags. Eventually we realized the faster deploying airbags were the problem and changed the deployment speeds so airbags actually helped, as opposed to killing, people. Unfortunately we never changed the mandatory seatbelt laws.
How good are the sensors? I have no clue. When I was into BMW E36's I considered modifying an e46 steering wheel for the e36. The one thing I could not do was the airbag, single stage vs dual stage. I asked my BMW parts/mechanic if it was smart to do. His response was to go ahead and do it, just never hook up the airbag. His reasoning was that he had dismantled many, many crashed e36's and had never seen a deployed airbag. So in his mind the airbag did not matter since it will never deploy.