Is there a way to disable the passenger side airbag in the 94 XJS so that a car seat can be used. The back seat area is too small for today's child safety seats. Any information will be greatly appreciated.

 

These are mechanically deployed airbags.

There is no way to disable them easily, since they do not require any power. Since there's no circuit feeding them, there will be no way to add a switch.

The best way would be to remove it?

 

I think that you have to remove the whole dash to takeout the bag.
You can disable the wheel bag with a tool to unscrew the firing pin. Doesn't the passenger airbag have the same feature ?

 

Vee, I am confused by what you are saying on the passenger air bag. Are you saying that the passenger airbag is a complete unit with all needed sensors etc. to deploy? If so I have not seen this before on a dash mounted passenger air bag from the 90's.

I am confident that the passenger air bag is fed by sensors mounted at the front of the car most likely on the front frame rails or lower radiator support area. It takes one of the sensors to trigger which will signal the air bags to deploy. If you unplug the back side of the passenger airbag you have now made the bag un deployable in a accident. You air bag light on the dash will stay on because system sees a fault but to my understanding as long as that bag is unplugged you will not see it deploy in a accident (how could it you have nothing to tell it to deploy ).

The air bags systems from the early to mid '90's were rather simple in there design and from what I have seen on these you have to have them plugged in to receive the needed signal to deploy.

As time went on you see more complex systems with impact sensors mounted in center of dash or console area. You also find now sensors in seats to tell passenger air bag if a passenger is even in the seat and if so how large a passenger to determine deployment rate but early to mid '90 systems were very straight forward.

Maybe I am totally clueless how Jaguar set this air bag up ( would not be the first time-LOL ) but I have not in the past seen a stand alone mechanical only driven air bar with no power feed. If that were the case how would the SRS control module know if there were a problem with the system while you were starting the car? This is why when you cycle the ignition switch your air bag light will come on for a few seconds until SRS module sees there are no faults and shuts the light off telling you system is ready and operational.

 

Just a thought. If you do this keep your face away from airbag incase of accidental deployment. Of any body part for that matter.

 

It's mechanical. There are no sensors. There is no wire feeding them.

I have disassembled my steering wheel, disarming the airbag, so I know this to be a fact on the drivers side. The service manual does not indicate anything different for the passengers side. (The disarm switch is at the rear of the airbag unit) There is no wiring harness that connects to it either.

You can try to look up a crash sensor for replacement, but you will find nothing, because it doesn't exist.

Can you take a picture of your airbag light. My 96 doesn't have one, so I'd love to see what it looks like.

 

Just to add my two-pence worth:

As Vee has said, both the drivers and passenger airbags are completely standalone. No electrical circuits, no wires connected, no sensors elsewhere in the car, no test cycle, no warning light, no fuses, nothing. They really on an arming pin to fire the airbag. Effectively an inertia switch principle.

The drivers airbag is "pre-armed" by using the engagement pin which needs the special tool (a simple D-shaped head socket) to pre-tension it.

The passenger airbag uses a bracket on the dash to "pre-arm" the bag. You just pivot the airbag down from the bracket to disarm it.

The passenger airbag can be disarmed but it requires the whole fascia to be removed to get to the bag and to move it to the disarmed position. As you can see, it's really not practical to do this on a regular basis. You might as well just remove the airbag if you're worried about carrying children in the front.

I'd really suggest that anyone who is thinking of removing, disarming or replacing the airbags reads fully through the Jaguar Service Manual so that they completely understands the diagrammatic and position of the components. If you've ever been around an airbag going off, you'll know that it's not something you want happening inadvertently!! A colleague of mine still has the burn scars on his wrists and a scar on his face to remind him!!

If you haven't got the Jaguar Supplementary CD-ROM or the new Jaguar Service DVD, don't even think about touching your airbags!

Stay safe.

Paul

 

Thank you all for the information, I think the airbag will stay as installed and other arrangements will be made if a child needs to be transported.
Thanks again.

 

Dabsjag,

I appreciate the problem you have. I also found that the rear seat is somewhat cramped for installing the modern full-size childrens seat. However, I did find that the fairly upright nature of the back seat with its small integral headrest meant that I could use a booster seat for my young daughter and the seat belt then held that in place quite well and she was sitting safely. I don't know if your children are old enough to use a booster seat only but it's something to consider.

Good luck

Paul

 

Thank you for the advice, much too old for young children but thinking about my grandson in the near future.
Thanks again, Paul.

 

I've attached the relevant sections from the manual in case anyone needs it.

This thread brings up something about which I've been thinking, and since Dabs' question seems to have been answered, or at least sufficiently addressed, I hope no one minds if I hijack it a bit.

What are folks' opinions on the airbags? Has anyone ever had one deploy?

I realize in many ways this is a personal decisions regarding one's safety, and I'm not asking for advice as much as just curious what others think.

I was reading around the internet on this subject so here are a couple assumptions that may or may not be correct:

- early airbags are big, and pretty brutal. Possibly designed (at least in North America) to work for people NOT wearing their seatbelts.

- NA airbags are made for big fat people (funny, if true).

The "special notes" on page 76-95 state that the NA airbags are different from European. However, the shoulder belts are also different (designed to stretch more) and it is called a Supplemental Restraint System, so perhaps not designed to work in lieu of seatbelts and I wonder what the difference is. Looking at some pictures it doesn't seem like it's smaller or not interchangeable. And haven't plenty of folks bought steering wheels from across the pond in either direction without paying attention to any differences?

Anyway, there are plenty of stories around the internet stating someone would have been better off without an airbag - burns, broken hands, eyeglasses shattering, etc. Who knows if that's true (if said person wouldn't have suffered much worse when they hit the steering wheel).

And there have been discussions on whether these old airbags might fail, either by going off when they're not supposed to (worst case scenario), or not going off when they should (in my opinion, much more likely). Obviously no one is following the 'service' recommendations listed in the center console, but what would one service anyway?

Where could one find the data on what conditions are supposed to fire the airbags?

There are threads on here discussing the inertia switch tripping after hitting a pothole, etc., so I imagine that's much more sensitive than whatever switch triggers the bags.

The Jag is my first vehicle with airbags, and I'm wary of them for a couple reasons.

- going off when they shouldn't while driving (probably not likely)

- going off when they should but turning a bruised shoulder into a bruised and battered face, partial blindness, etc. (in other words, being worse off with them going off)

- going off when I'm working on vehicle or drop it off a jackstand or some stupidity and cracking an expensive windshield or ruining the seats or my face (pretty as it is) or something

- NOT going off when they should, which is a non issue I guess except for the fact that I'd like a nicer/smaller wheel and I'd love a glove box, and there are some extra 20 year old chemicals in the car that aren't doing anyone any good

- inability to turn off passenger side for kids, pregnant lady, whatever

I've (thankfully) only been in one good wreck in my life, I was stopped in traffic and rear ended pretty good by an inattentive driver (before cell phones!), enough to wreck the tailgate and rear end of an old S-10, 20+ years ago. I was fine, but if an airbag exploded in my face I think (but really I have no idea) I could have been worse off.

Thinking about this another way, my 'regular' vehicle doesn't have airbags, and if I'd found the XJS in the exact spec I wanted, but an 85 as opposed to a 95, I never would have given the lack of airbags a second thought. But, God forbid, if something were to happen, regardless of whether or not the airbags would have helped, if I had removed them, I would never hear the end of it.

What about you guys? Was it a factor in your purchase? Glad to have 'em? Or try not to think about 'em? Or glad you don't have 'em or even got rid of 'em?

Thanks.

Here's a pic from the internet - should the airbags have deployed?

 

I don't think about them. Hopefully, I'll never need them.

There are some people who believe they could be better off without a seatbelt.

There are always exceptions to the rule. People are 10x more likely to complain when an airbag does something wrong, then when it does something good. For every one person who writes in with bad experiences with an airbag, there are ten who don't.

That doesn't mean there's a one in ten chance that an airbag will cause more harm than good, just addressing the people that write reviews on airbags.

Without any evidence, I believe I have a better chance of a positive experience with an airbag deployment than a negative, so I'll have to take my chances. I like the odds.

Does anyone even know what kind of NHTSA crash rating the XJS gets?

Oh, and I definitely voted "no" on the airbag deployment on your pic before I scrolled down to see if I was right.

 

I believe you can disable the airbag in the steering wheel and completely remove the airbag on the passengers side, if you wish.

It would mean spending a lot of money, or time in dash removal. You might have to make a small modification to the steering wheel to allow it to be functional with the firing pin retracted, but it may be a simple matter of removing a small metal access door.