Wife’s 2014 Nissan Rogue rebuilt title NASTY airbag surprise.

Humour columnist Dave Barry wrote a light but quite entertaining novel 20 or so years ago. The title escapes me.

It's been quite a few years, but as I recall the badness of one of the villains is established through a description of his past enterprise: Buying written-off cars with deployed airbags, and replacing the airbags with non-functional dummies.
 
That would be on the buyer, or the buyer could fix it. Used airbags for older cars are pretty cheap.
Used airbags probably isn’t the best description 😆. I bought one from an eBay seller for $189. The passenger airbag was only $50 from flea bay.
 
Are you certain these airbags you bought online are not part of the major recalls that have been killing people upon deployment. In other words old faulty airbags. Not sure if Nissan was involved in this recall but it's seems likely. Worth checking.
 
No, it would be unethical if the dealer sold the car AND disabled, or even worse, monkeyed with the light so it came on and went off as its normally supposed to. When the airbag light is on, it's puts the driver on alert that there is something wrong with the system. OP choose to ignore that warning for years. A state safety inspection would have uncovered this years ago, but assume the state it was in doesn't have that?
What a dog-eat-dog world you aspire to live in!

 
Are you certain these airbags you bought online are not part of the major recalls that have been killing people upon deployment. In other words old faulty airbags. Not sure if Nissan was involved in this recall but it's seems likely. Worth checking.
You would need to look it up by VIN, but Nissan seemed to use less recalled airbags. Very few Takata and whatever the other big recall was from. Neither of my Nissan's were ever recalled for the airbags. My Frontier did have an airbag reprogram for the side airbags - they deployed too easily or something.
 
big job here. Following the Nissan factory manual, I’ve finally removed the dashboard. This job always intimidated me, but with a good set of instructions, it’s doable. This was needed to install the passenger airbag. Tomorrow I begin putting things together. Hopefully that airbag light turns off!

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While that was a crappy thing done...the dealership was smart enough to not disable the airbag light. Legally they did nothing wrong as they will claim they fixed the cosmetic issues and with the airbag light on - that is full disclosure of an air bag issue.
 
I think you have to have a fancy scan tool to turn off the airbag light, even if you fix the issue.

At least that’s how it was for my 2004 VW. I took it to a small Euro garage and they said to reset it, it may have been a fluke and it doesn’t turn itself off. They did and all was well. Was a sensor for the passenger seat or something.
 
That’s a good point about programming the new airbag to the PCM or the airbag control module.

I see a QR code on the new airbag. It may be needed for the programming. So don’t assemble the dashboard before checking if programming is required or not. Or at the very least take a nice closeup picture of that QR code.
 
I swear my heart rate goes up when I see these dash removal pics/videos. Brain starts to misfire while reading the instructions...

Great work @Kurtatron. I'll dive into lots of repairs, but I don't have the best luck (or finesse?) with plastic interior bits, weird connectors, etc.
 
Thought I’d let you all know the airbag light is successfully off.

But the steering light is a new one. But at least the airbag system is now fully repaired.

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I had to heat shrink the snipped passenger airbag wires, but they should hold just fine after tying the copper strands very tight.

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The most ironic thing I find is letting your wife drive a car with an airbag error code- because you are "cheap" Maybe it's just me......
I will let it slide. Most of us made it into adulthood without air bag tech, ABS, traction control and mandatory seatbelt laws.
 
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