AIrbag question/issue

[strophius]

So a few weeks ago while driving down the highway on a trip I had the passenger side seat airbag and passenger side curtain airbag deploy for no apparent reason. After pulling off the road and doing a visual check of everything I couldn't find a single thing that would indicate anything hit the side of my car. I drove the car about 50 miles back to my local dealership and have been waiting to hear back on what the cause was and what can be done.

Audi of America called me yesterday and told that since my car is lowered they would not help me with the repairs....

This seems very strange to me as I don't understand how having a lowered car can compromise your airbag system and cause them to randomly deploy...has anyone ever heard of such a thing? I'm still trying to talk with them to get more information on what the actual cause was, but it seems I may have to take care of this myself. My main concern is the seat belt on the passenger seat no longer works. Has anyone replaced this? Is it an entire assembly that needs replacing or just one part?

I'm thinking I'll just repair the headliner trim where the curtain airbag came through and try to source a new passenger seat (I've got the manual leatherette seats). I also would like to get the airbag light to turn off (error lights really bug me). Would that require just replacing the spent airbags and clearing any codes with VCDS? I'll probably just try to source one from a local junkyard. Are all the B5 years interchangeable in terms of airbags? I've got a 2001 AWM

This whole ordeal has been very frustrating...I really love this car and was very disappointed with the AoA response so any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

-Brenden

[rollerton]

It all depends on how much you're in a mood for a fight. Obviously they're using the modified suspension as an excuse with no basis. A good and hungry lawyer might take this case since it involves passenger safety and you could file a complaint with the NTHSA, but it would cost money and you're only looking at a comparatively small amount of money relative to what the lawyer would get paid and what the case would cost.
Airbags in general are said to have a life of 12-14 years, after that they say they need replacing anyway. I'd bet it's a short in the Airbag sensor for those airbags. Shortest way to get your car back is buy the airbags/seat used and replace the seatbelt also. The seatbelt has an 'ignitor' built into the retractor, you'll need the whole thing.
After it's all fixed you should be able to turn the Airbag light off with VCDS.

[Alex-A4-Avant]

Sorry to bear bad news Dependent on the harshness of the lowered suspension it could cause it to go off if you hit a pot holes with a bit of a bump. As it would see the vibration as an accident

Sent from my SM-G903F using Tapatalk

[MetalMan]

With the airbag light, once you replace the air bags and seat belt igniter, you may also need to replace the airbag module (with one that wasn't in a car accident).

On my 1998.5 A4, I deployed the seat airbag in a crash. The air bag module had a permanent fault code stored because it detected a crash. If your module doesn't have any crash data stored then this is a non-issue.

It may also be worth scanning the air bag module with VCDS to see if it might have any codes stored which relate to which (if any) sensor(s) triggered the air bag deployment.

[strophius]

Thanks for the responses. I agree that the lowered suspension being the problem is a lame excuse, especially in this case since there was no pot hole or anything involved. I'm not sure I want to go the legal route but I'll most likely talk with a lawyer to see if I have any options. Most likely I see myself parting together replacements though. The car is barely lowered and I've hit some pot holes pretty hard in the past that I thought bent a rim and never had an issue.

Are airbags something that a junkyard would still have in the car or do they remove those? I've never touched airbags before so I'm fairly new to this. I'd like focus on getting the passenger seat belt working again so I'll start looking around for a used one. I get the car back on Monday so I'll do a VCDS scan and see what comes up. Luckily the technician at the dealership was very cool and tried to give me as much info as he could in regards to what will need fixing and what routes I could go. I'm also considering just pulling the airbag controller module (this is located under the radio correct?) because I don't know how much I trust the other airbags at this point...