80's era airbag/SRS light
 

Action is a little light on the SL forum, so since the airbags and SRS light situation is similar on most models in the 80's, I figured I'd give it a try here.

Got around to removing the steering wheel on my 560SL to clean out and take a look at my airbag contacts. Have a couple of questions.

Is it possible to determine the age of the airbag? If the airbag was replaced on the car for some reason, is there a date associated with the airbag serial number that Mercedes or someone else can look up?

The inside contact area was not terribly dirty, but I did clean it up and blow out the carbon residue. Before I put it back together and hope that just cleaning it up fixed it like some others have reported, is it normal for the two outer rings to be grooved? The two outer rings have a pretty good groove worn into them by the four outer brushes. The two inner rings are not grooved at all. The brushes themselves seem to have some life left in them. Since this is the first time I've seen the airbag contacts and rings, I need to know what is normal and what if anything needs to be replaced.

A couple of photos are shown in the thread I reference in Post #2.

Go to Post #6 here for photos:

http://www.peachparts.com/shopforum/mercedes-benz-sl-discussion-forum/203674-srs-light-always.html

My 88 300E would make the light come on sometimes when I was driving down the road.. Seems the part of the contact ring that got the most wear was right there in the middle.. IE with the steering wheel centered. The light would only come on sometimes. Replacing the contact ring fixed it.. I would think that if the light were on all the time that it might not be the contact ring.. Even on mine if I turned the wheel off center the light would go out. Hope this helps.

Well, I put it all back together and didn't hurt myself or set the airbag off. The SRS light is back on as before - continuously. It comes on when I insert the key and turn it on. Then when I start the car, it goes out but comes back on after maybe ten seconds and then it stays on all the time. So that leads me to believe that the problem lies somewhere else in the SRS system. It sure looks to my untrained eye that everything is okay with the brushes and the contact rings under the steering wheel now that I have been told that those grooves belong there.

So now my question is where do I go from here? If I can get hold of a blink-code reader, will that narrow down the location of the problem? Is there anything else I can test or check without throwing parts at the problem?

Sorry, I am out of ideas here. The only think I have ever had to do with SRS was replace the contact ring on my 300E and put in an airbag controller in my s320.. DUE to airbag deployment.

I was working on my SL awhile back and had to remove/replace the airbag and steering wheel about a dozen times. I found it really easy to not quite get the plug located properly into the airbag socket. Simple to check.