VAG-COM NUKED Airbags

FL2AK-tdi

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Matthew_S said:
That code could have been in there for years. I've scanned at least three or four VW or Audi SRS controllers that had the low voltage code with no light on. It is the only air bag code I've ever seen in any air bag controller that didn't turn the light on.
Now that's an interesting perspective. I don't think anyone here has looked at it quite like that.

I was unaware that that cde could exist without setting of a caution light.

I do not think any of this can be settled without checking the power and ground at the controller. I can use the volt meter in parallel and use the connector's power AND grond at the same time to test the circuit without using the OHM meter's injected current, eliminating the risk of the ohm meter blasting the bags. I just need some wiring diagrams and figure out how to get to the controller.

As for all of the statements comparing the vag-com tool to a craftsman wrench or the genuine VW tool:

I agree that we're flogging a dead horse.

My contention is not that it would not have happened with a VW tablet but that it did happen with vag-com. certainly, it's apparently well known that the issue does, ineed lie inside the VW part. Furthermore, my contention is that the Vag-Com people know about the POTENTIAL to cause damage, at one time had a failsafe that disallowed a user from scanning the airbags by default-thereby limiting the potential, and then removed that failsafe in the 607 version.

I believe that vag-com et-al should, as soon as possible, issue an updated version of their product which reinstalls that failsafe, thereby protecting their customers.

I feel that it is totally irrelevant wehter or not there is or is not a voltage problem in the car. The fact remains that there is a "bug" out there, scanning the controler with vag-com and others "awakes" that bug and fries the controller via the 65xxx dtc.

The fact remains, and I stand firm on this, that had the 607 version which I used, had a failsafe in the form of a dialog box with red letters saying "you are about to do possible damage your ABS system, do you wish to continue?" I would have clicked cancel and this thread would never have existed. The controler may, hopefully, have thrown the low voltage code, which I would then have to deal with, but I wouldn't be buying a controller.

It is the absolute resistance to this protection of present and future customers that amazes me.

I sincerely hope that vag-com will issue an updated version with an ABS failsafe. However, at this point, I think we all should agree to disagree.

If anyone has any tech info that might b useful in verifying the low voltage code, I'm all ears.
 

Airliner

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Audi A4 1.9TDi Avant Quattro 2001 silver
FL2AK-tdi said:
Now that's an interesting perspective. I don't think anyone here has looked at it quite like that.
You don't read my posts, do you ? I don't know HOW MANY TIMES I'VE TRIED TO TELL YOU THAT THERE PROBABLY WAS SOMETHING WRONG TO BEGIN WITH. But it's MORE than once.

FL2AK-tdi said:
I do not think any of this can be settled without checking the power and ground at the controller. I can use the volt meter in parallel and use the connector's power AND grond at the same time to test the circuit without using the OHM meter's injected current, eliminating the risk of the ohm meter blasting the bags. I just need some wiring diagrams and figure out how to get to the controller.
Why don't you just do what I suggest ? Find and clean the ground connection. See if the low voltage code will clear.


FL2AK-tdi said:
I believe that vag-com et-al should, as soon as possible, issue an updated version of their product which reinstalls that failsafe, thereby protecting their customers.

I sincerely hope that vag-com will issue an updated version with an ABS failsafe. However, at this point, I think we all should agree to disagree.
I totally agree. And also disable theese functions too:

The code function
The adaption function
The basic settings function
The output test function
The login function

And probably a lot more. They can all be used to destroy your car if you don't know what you're doing.

Also I would like you to create some kind of questionare you have to answer before you are allowed to run VAG-COM. This would prevent people who don't have a clue of what their doing, to use it.

FL2AK-tdi said:
If anyone has any tech info that might b useful in verifying the low voltage code, I'm all ears.
What's the point ? You don't want to check what we suggest anyway.

Sorry mate, I don't think you have any other options than getting your car to a dealer who knows what he is doing.
 

Airliner

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Audi A4 1.9TDi Avant Quattro 2001 silver
FL2AK-tdi said:
The fact remains, and I stand firm on this, that had the 607 version which I used, had a failsafe in the form of a dialog box with red letters saying "you are about to do possible damage your ABS system, do you wish to continue?" I would have clicked cancel and this thread would never have existed. The controler may, hopefully, have thrown the low voltage code, which I would then have to deal with, but I wouldn't be buying a controller.
ABS don't have anything to do with this.

Now tell me. How do you think the system works ? You say that you would not have scanned the airbag module if you know this. BUT, you would have got the low voltage code ? How the he.. would you get the code if you don't scan the module in question ?

Like a aircraft mechanic told us on the technical part of the 737 course: these things are machines, not any magical animals !
 

FL2AK-tdi

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'01 Jetta GLS Sedan
Airliner, so you work 73's? That's great, I work cargo 74's here in Anchorage. So when you were just learning the airframe, did you know where everything was and what it was?

If your lead said "go clean the ground terminal for the RADALT transceiver." would you know immediately where it was? Or just add any other component to that; would you know, without training, where it was and what to remove to get to it?

I'm willing to do a little bit if I have an idea where to start.

But quite honestly, I'm not ripping the interior apart on a guess. I have to have this car running every day. My girlfriend and I have only this car between us. If I rip it apart and then don't get it back together before the end of the weekend, my one-day weekend, then what?

Seriously, I can work one day of overtime at the airport and make enough money to pay someone else to do it. Hopefully they'll have the car done in a day. It's not my preferred, but I can live with that. I can also live with a stupid little airbag caution light for a while too.

If I knew for sure I could get to the connector, check the voltage and get the interior back to gether in an hour or two, I would be happy to find the ground terminal and clean it.

What did you think I was talking about when I asked if anyone had any tech info?

PS you're right though, if I hadn't scanned the controller, I wouldn't have gotten the low voltage code, and that would have been fine with me too.

PPS: a couple of people here have asked me to try to be a little more polite and courteous in here, and so far I think I'm trying. Why are you giving me such hard a time?
 

Airliner

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Audi A4 1.9TDi Avant Quattro 2001 silver
FL2AK-tdi said:
Airliner, so you work 73's? That's great, I work cargo 74's here in Anchorage. So when you were just learning the airframe, did you know where everything was and what it was?

If your lead said "go clean the ground terminal for the RADALT transceiver." would you know immediately where it was? Or just add any other component to that; would you know, without training, where it was and what to remove to get to it?

I'm willing to do a little bit if I have an idea where to start.

But quite honestly, I'm not ripping the interior apart on a guess. I have to have this car running every day. My girlfriend and I have only this car between us. If I rip it apart and then don't get it back together before the end of the weekend, my one-day weekend, then what?

Seriously, I can work one day of overtime at the airport and make enough money to pay someone else to do it. Hopefully they'll have the car done in a day. It's not my preferred, but I can live with that. I can also live with a stupid little airbag caution light for a while too.

If I knew for sure I could get to the connector, check the voltage and get the interior back to gether in an hour or two, I would be happy to find the ground terminal and clean it.

What did you think I was talking about when I asked if anyone had any tech info?

PS you're right though, if I hadn't scanned the controller, I wouldn't have gotten the low voltage code, and that would have been fine with me too.

PPS: a couple of people here have asked me to try to be a little more polite and courteous in here, and so far I think I'm trying. Why are you giving me such hard a time?
I'm working "on" 737, but I'm a pilot, and don't have detailed information about how to repair these machines. I have detailed information about how to fly these machines :)

I've told you that this ground is probably somewhere around the drivers feet. This is the best I can do (since I'm in europe, with european cars), and also this is a very limited space to look at. Have you looked at this place ? Or are you just assuming that it's not there ?

One day off is not enough ? It takes me about 2 min. to remover the cover above the drivers feet. About 5 min. with my maglite to have a look and locate every ground connection in this area. About 45 min. to remove them, sand them, maybe use som dielectri grease, and put everything back again. If you are not familiar with how to remove teh cover you will maybe use 10 min instead of my 2. But you are still done with the work in about 1h. One day should be enough to check all and every ground connection in the whole car.

Things are NEVER going to fix itself. You have to work for it. You will probably never get the exact location of the ground connections.

Have you checked the MEL about driving with the airbag module U/S ? :)

I'm just giving you what you ask for my friend. I have gived you hints about things to check and a possible reason why this happened. But you are abviosly not interessted in my advices. But then again, you can't say things like: "Now that's an interesting perspective. I don't think anyone here has looked at it quite like that.". Because I (and also Uwe) said this many hours ago.

I get the feeling that the only thing you want to do is getting VAG-COM and Ross-Tech responsible for what happened, and you are working much harder with this than get your car's airbag system back in action again.
You also want the airbag scanning to be disabled in VAG-COM, which would render the tool U/S for everyone. And as far as I know, you are not even a customer with ross-tech ? Do you know who will be affected if ross-tech disabled the scan function for airbags ? Not you, but me and everyone else who has paid for the great products Ross-Tech manufacture.

So I think you should focus more on getting your car's airbag system back "online". ALL AND EVERYONE who has involved in this tread wants to help you with this. And most of us is trying to give advices that you can use, even if the advices is not as specific as you could wish.
 

FL2AK-tdi

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Airliner said:
But then again, you can't say things like: "Now that's an interesting perspective. I don't think anyone here has looked at it quite like that.". Because I (and also Uwe) said this many hours ago.
I was referring to the idea that the low voltage code could exist without illuminating the caution light. I was going on the idea that any code would illuminate the caution light.

I totally agree wth your diagnosis that there may be a genuine voltage level problem. I'm flying out for two weeks with my family in the morning. As soon as I return, I will go into the area under the steering wheel and near the driver floor area, as per you instructions. I agree that the ground wire terminals won't be far from the component.

As for the vag-com issue and etc: no, I'm not a "customer." I borrowed this from an aquaintance. No, after this, I do not believe I ever will be a customer.

As for rendering "cutomer's" units unusable: I'm not suggesting totally disbling the airbag scan function. I suggested placing a warning immediately prior to iniating the scan-to protect other users from the 65xxx code bug problem, not the low voltage issue which, admittedly, must be in my car.

No one is intrested in that and that is the primary reason I would not consider purchasing a vag-com.

We are, indeed, flogging a dead horse. I stand firm in my opinion that vag-com set off the 65xxx code in my controller; you stand firmly opposite of that. We MUST agree to disagree.

And on that note, Happy new year to you all-I'm going on vacation-somewhere warm lol. =)
 

Airliner

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Audi A4 1.9TDi Avant Quattro 2001 silver
FL2AK-tdi said:
I was referring to the idea that the low voltage code could exist without illuminating the caution light. I was going on the idea that any code would illuminate the caution light.

I totally agree wth your diagnosis that there may be a genuine voltage level problem. I'm flying out for two weeks with my family in the morning. As soon as I return, I will go into the area under the steering wheel and near the driver floor area, as per you instructions. I agree that the ground wire terminals won't be far from the component.

As for the vag-com issue and etc: no, I'm not a "customer." I borrowed this from an aquaintance. No, after this, I do not believe I ever will be a customer.

As for rendering "cutomer's" units unusable: I'm not suggesting totally disbling the airbag scan function. I suggested placing a warning immediately prior to iniating the scan-to protect other users from the 65xxx code bug problem, not the low voltage issue which, admittedly, must be in my car.

No one is intrested in that and that is the primary reason I would not consider purchasing a vag-com.

We are, indeed, flogging a dead horse. I stand firm in my opinion that vag-com set off the 65xxx code in my controller; you stand firmly opposite of that. We MUST agree to disagree.

And on that note, Happy new year to you all-I'm going on vacation-somewhere warm lol. =)
Why should they placing a warning ? VAG-COM will normally NOT wake up the 65535 IF everything is working correctly on / with the module when it is scanned. Ross-Tech has worked hard even with the manufacture of the affected airbag module to prevent this (the vendor of the VAG diagnostics have not done this, and the original VAG diagnostics is much more likely to wake up the 65535).

The 65535 was most probably set because a fault somewhere in the power supply to the airbag module in your car.

Maybe there is a little chance that the airbags had not deployed if your car had been in a accident ? When you get things "online" again you know for sure that your airbag system is "fit for fight". And you can safely scan it to check fault codes in the future :)

Have a nice vacation.
I suggest you stay cool in the water until you have fixed this airbag thing :D (just kidding).

If you want, you may send me your car details in a private msg. And I may try to get hold of some more information concerning the airbag wiring harness. But as I said, I don't think I have US models in my books.

I need details about car model year, sales model, engine code and gear code.
 

penclnck

Member
Joined
May 9, 2001
Location
Knoxville, TN
FL2AK-tdi said:
We are, indeed, flogging a dead horse. I stand firm in my opinion that vag-com set off the 65xxx code in my controller; you stand firmly opposite of that. We MUST agree to disagree.
And I will blame my Craftsman wrench for that broken stud. Maybe you should blame a firmware issue for the root cause since it is a known issue. As noted by Uwe:

Uwe said:
I believe that since version 404.0, VAG-COM is actually safer to use on those buggy modules than the dealers' own tools because it keeps track of how many times the request has been issued and won't do more than twice without prompting you to turn off the ignition for 30 seconds -- thereby resetting the module and preventing the crash. The dealers' tools have no such safeguards.
You has mentioned the lack of safegaurds and as it has been noted, if you use version 607, there are already safegaurds in place that run in the background. If you used the Snap On Modu$ scan tool and got the same thing, would you blame Snap On? If you took the car to the dealer and they told you about the dealer, would you blame them? Or are you only blaming VAG COM because they are the only source to point out there can be an issue?

.....ok, the movie Moulin Rouge! that my wife is watching now..... uggggg! It was directed/edited by someone with a very short attention span. Men... avoid this movie.. I'm loosing Man Points just being in the same room with the TV right now.:mad:
 

FL2AK-tdi

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I really don't want to raise this from the dead, given all the misunderstnadings andm isgiving that arose from it, but I thught I might just add this so that someone else doesn't get misled by one of the suggestions.

I pulled the bottom half of the dashboard apart today. It's not hard to do, 4 screws under the steering wheel.

Anyway, there are NO wires or ground terminals relating to the Airbag controller under the steering whell area.

I pulled the side panel to access the controller itself. By the way, you only have to pull the one way in the back; don't pull the one that runs along where the shift lever is. (auto trans)

The airbag controller sits all the way to the front of the compartment. The wiring harness for it goes straight up, behind the A/C control panel and stereo and further up out of sight.

I did not find anything unusual with the part of the harness which can be seen. It locks in to the controller on the driver's side with a lift up lever. It appears to be held in by 3 threaded studs with 10 mm nuts.
 

Airliner

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FL2AK-tdi said:
I really don't want to raise this from the dead, given all the misunderstnadings andm isgiving that arose from it, but I thught I might just add this so that someone else doesn't get misled by one of the suggestions.

I pulled the bottom half of the dashboard apart today. It's not hard to do, 4 screws under the steering wheel.

Anyway, there are NO wires or ground terminals relating to the Airbag controller under the steering whell area.

I pulled the side panel to access the controller itself. By the way, you only have to pull the one way in the back; don't pull the one that runs along where the shift lever is. (auto trans)

The airbag controller sits all the way to the front of the compartment. The wiring harness for it goes straight up, behind the A/C control panel and stereo and further up out of sight.

I did not find anything unusual with the part of the harness which can be seen. It locks in to the controller on the driver's side with a lift up lever. It appears to be held in by 3 threaded studs with 10 mm nuts.
I really does not sound like you have taken apart the covering on the a pillar where the ground connections is. But the ground connection MIGHT be on the right side of the car.

At least on my Audi A4 2001, according to the wiring diagram, there should be a yellow 10 pin connector on the right a pillar. And from this connection there is a brown wire (standard ground color is brown) running to ground connection 109, which is the ground connection for the airbag controller. I can't tell from the wiring diagram if the ground connection is located on the right a pillar, but I would be surprised if it was not. I know for sure that there is at least two ground connections on the right (and also two on the left, at least) A pillar.
 

FL2AK-tdi

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'01 Jetta GLS Sedan
Airliner said:
I really does not sound like you have taken apart the covering on the a pillar where the ground connections is. But the ground connection MIGHT be on the right side of the car.

At least on my Audi A4 2001, according to the wiring diagram, there should be a yellow 10 pin connector on the right a pillar. And from this connection there is a brown wire (standard ground color is brown) running to ground connection 109, which is the ground connection for the airbag controller. I can't tell from the wiring diagram if the ground connection is located on the right a pillar, but I would be surprised if it was not. I know for sure that there is at least two ground connections on the right (and also two on the left, at least) A pillar.
Ok, so when you say "A pilar" are you referring to the beam that goes from the roof down to the body? That has always been my understanding of what an A pilar is. Or are you referring to the area directy forward of and adjacent to the door hinges?

Thanks for taking the time to look up the wire colors and terminal markings for me! =)
 

Airliner

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FL2AK-tdi said:
Ok, so when you say "A pilar" are you referring to the beam that goes from the roof down to the body? That has always been my understanding of what an A pilar is. Or are you referring to the area directy forward of and adjacent to the door hinges?

Thanks for taking the time to look up the wire colors and terminal markings for me! =)
Well, in this particular question we are talking about the lower part of the A pilar, the part located just by your feet when you are seated in the car (and note: I'm talking about the right side, not drivers side).

The color coding is from a european wiring diagram for audi A4, don't know if a wiring diagram for a European Jetta would be similar to a U.S. Jetta.
 
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