GOBOGIE

On my '89 951, over the passenger side air bag there is a lid/cover whatever you want to call it. It's part of the dash. Well is has a small indentation in it, I'm thinking from the sun (car was in Florida/Colorado prior to my purchasing) but big enough to want to fix it.

Has anybody else had this problem? Can I replace just this cover or does it have to be a whole dash replacement to fix?

Cost if replaceable? How would you go about replacing it?

Deepice

the air bag actualy sits behind that cover. It is not part of the airbag.

If you take out your glove box and remove the glove box door you can use a flash light and see what I am talking about.


When you are fooling around with the air bag make sure you disconect the negative ground on the battery and let the car sit at least 30 minutes to let the air bag capacitors discharge.

GOBOGIE

Can I get at the lid through the section in the glove box that your talking about?

Deepice

yes, but it is a bit of a bitch, I will post some pictures give me a few hours. I will post by 1 AM.

GOBOGIE

Thank you very much for you replies. I appreciate your help. I'll e-mail you a pic of my air bag lid to show you what I'm talking about.

Thanks again! Look forward to seeing what your pics look like!

emilysgranny

Cory ;this is not a fun job as you must be a contorionist to get to the bolts..I believe their are 2 bolts on each end of the airbag holder unit(which is golden in color ) and 1 in the center . Once you remove the unit from the dash,it will be obvious .The unit comes out forward toward the passenger. These covers are hard to come by and are not cheap.Be very careful as these are quite literally bombs capable of serious injury.Always keep the bag side toward you not the steel side.HTH

GOBOGIE

Thank you. Very good information. Do you have an idea (ballpark) on the price of a lid?

If it's way too much, I've thought about trying to use a heat gun (very lightly of course) and try to heat it up just enough to try to bend/push/reshape it back to it's original shape. Just a thought...

emilysgranny

Cory ; I can't remember exactly but 75-100 seems to stick in my head. I know I was quite taken back by the price for a pc of plastic.That explosive charge is about 2 M80's, so be careful. <img src="graemlins/icon107.gif" border="0" alt="[icon107]" />

Deepice

Here are some photos from the rear of the dash.










The last one you can see the tab on the back of the airbag unit.

When you do this make sure you disconect the negative terminal on the battery for at least 30 minutes

GOBOGIE

Great pics!!! Let run through this to see if I'm going in the right direction:

.5) Forgot this, disconnect (-) battery cable for at least 30 mins. Can airbag still detonate after this when I'm removing it??
1) take off glove box door and look in with flashlight to get an idea about where things are.
2) remove screws 2 on each side and one in the middle to remove unit.

Deepice

When you look at the back of the air bag you will see 2 wires running into it with red clips. after you wait for the capacitor to discharge (30 minutes) disconnect these wires from the rear of the bag. When you disconnect the wires with the red connectors from the rear of the bag it will automatically short the contacts and prevent (in theory) the bag from discharging by accident.