Thread: non srs air bag bullbar onto a disco with srs airbags

I think the big worry is that the SRS untested bull bar will adversely affect the correct deployment of the SRS air bags at the appropriate time in an accident. We are talking about seconds/milliseconds here and I'm sure you want your SRS air bag to stop your head hitting the steering wheel or dash rather than if the air bag depoyed too early to stop it hitting and inflates when in [or near] hard contact with your face or ir inflates too late and blasts your impact injured head backwards.

Timing is critical which is why the bull bar market does testing with their bars intended to be fitted to SRS equipped vehicles.

Airbag bars have concertina style crush brackets that allow the mount to deform, i dont where the sensors are but they arent on the chassis rails anywhere that i can see. Personally i'm not a fan of windbags and would have chosen not to have them in my disco but everything else about the car was right and it only had a driver windbag, if i still own it when it comes to the 15 years lifespan of the bag being up then i will remove or disable it. So to cut a long story short if you are planning to offroad it then i personally would fit a non airbag bar if one came up at the right price - i certainly wouldnt be paying the ARB list price of $1700 odd for one .

My last Disco had a non airbag Bullbar even though the car had a drivers airbag.
When offroading I used to pull the fuse fearing that the bag may go off if the terrain was too rough. After fogetting a few times I did,nt bother again & it was never a prob.
Cheers Dean.

I think the sensor is somewhere in the centre console. My old BMW compact had it under the back seat.
I would be very surprised if offroading made the bag go off even with a bullbar fitted. They have to take quite a whack to trigger and the only way they can fire is with an electrical signal from the controller. I would be more concerned about dodgy electrics.

Adrian.

There are 2 sensors in the vehicle. One on each chassis rail roughly level with the radiator. You can follow the yellow cable through the engine bay to find them. The control unit is under the centre console. I think the sensors require major deformation of the chassis rail in order to "contact" and trigger the airbag. Hence if you only "hit" 1 chassis rail, only 1 airbag will go off.

Originally Posted by warren9981

There are 2 sensors in the vehicle. One on each chassis rail roughly level with the radiator. You can follow the yellow cable through the engine bay to find them. The control unit is under the centre console. I think the sensors require major deformation of the chassis rail in order to "contact" and trigger the airbag. Hence if you only "hit" 1 chassis rail, only 1 airbag will go off.

I depent what year D1 you have. The earlier one had two sensors (one chassis and one deacceleration sensor) but the update only has one that sensors deacceleration in the drive line (similar to D2), I can't think of the name at the moment but read up on this awhile ago as I had the same concerns.

There are no sensors on my chassis rails - 98 TDI.

Must have changed them around '96ish. I will get some photos and post them on here when I get a chance.



Taken from the Rave CD. This is how my Disco was but admittedly haven't looked at a later unit.