legacycentral bbs

So after a fair bit of searching I'm still totally lost. Here goes;

I bought a 94 Touring Wagon from BC (I live in Alberta). The car is almost mint, runs beautiful, looks awesome and is gonna be so so good. I need an Out of Province inspection of course.

Being a total idiot, I test fitted my Nardi wheel from a GC8, it fits awesome and looks sweet. Upon replacing the stock wheel I must have caught the flat harness in the clock spring somehow or some way and when I turned a hard right, I felt a click and my airbag light is on.

I've taken the wheel/clock spring off numerous times, can't find anything wrong other than a small nick in the white flat band harness that runs through the clock spring itself. I'm not 100% convinced that this is the problem, it just doesn't look like it would hurt anything, it's not severed the wire or anything. I'd just black out the airbag light on the cluster but if whoever inspects it notices there is no airbag light on when running the test lights, he might fail it or something.

I went out and bought a wheel and clockspring+harness from a mid 90's outback. As some of you may know, all of the plugs work except the dash-side airbag. It's a different style with 1 less wire (Only two).
Is there a wire that's not needed possibly? Maybe a wiring diagram which states which is which and I could just try it?
I'd try get a clock spring from a first gen but they are so so rare out here in AB (Hence why I have to travel to BC to buy mine, this is my second from there.)


It totally sucks that this is the ONLY thing that will make the car not fail an inspection, no CEL, no damage and no problems at all.
I'd black out the airbag light and throw the Nardi on but I'm just scared it'll be caught in inspection.

Thoughts guys?
Thanks.

Sorry, my '93 Sedan doesn't have a passenger air bag, but have you tried the repair manual? Its got a huge amount of info.

http://www.amazon.com/Subaru-Legacy-Hay ... air+manual

Thanks man, yeah I'm gonna look into it today. I'm worried because I need a horn and the Nardi wheel doesn't have a plug like the factory harness, it's just a single wire. I could chop the airbag wires out of the harness but then I'd be in the same spot, airbag light on and a horn that maybe works.
This sucks Haha.

Check the airbag system to confirm that the issue is with the steering wheel/clock spring assembly.

http://main.experiencetherave.com/subar ... ostic1.jpg
http://main.experiencetherave.com/subar ... ostic2.jpg
http://main.experiencetherave.com/subar ... ostic3.jpg

Thanks a lot Josh, as always, you're the man. I'm having troubles understanding how to diagnose still, I'll keep re-reading until I get it.
Do you think it'd be okay to cut all but one wire from the flat harness (white strip that runs through the clock spring) and run it to my horn, for my Nardi? I heard there's a guy who won't worry about the lack of airbag as long as the light is off and I have a horn.
Thanks.

K I scrapped the original clock spring and tore my cluster apart and pulled the airbag bulb, so no airbag light, new wheel (96 impreza wheel) and a working horn! Yaaaay.

Now my signals don't work... they don't illuminate and I don't hear the relay click. So that's my next issue.
Also, I've put my speedo cable back in that cluster 3 times already and STILL can't get it, even after removing it from the tranny. It's driving me crazy.

So does the airbag now not work? You may be creating more issues than your fixing here....

Did the signals work before you messed with the horn/airbag?

Regarding the signals, they route through the hazard button; if it's not plugged in the signals will not work.

What is the issue with your speedo cable? Are you just not able to get it to seat in the cluster?

Fixed the signals, yeah I didn't plug in the hazard switch.
The speedo cable is just impossible to get seated, yeah, I've tried a few times and I'm gonna go out and buy a new cable all together.
Yeah, I have no airbag, the Nardi wheel I have doesn't have an airbag so I had to remove the bulb from cluster to make it pass inspection. The clock spring I'm using is from an outback, which doesn't cancel the signals... hmph. At least the horn works and now it'll pass inspection.

Hey Josh, ever heard of a CEL turning on after about 20 minutes of driving (easy driving or harder, happens with both) then as soon as I shut the car off to run the CEL test the light is gone? SO annoying. Turns off every time I park so I can't see what the code even is.

Regarding the CEL, it could be the canister purge solenoid. I've experienced that before.

You should be able to still run the check for stored codes regardless whether the light is on. Just use the black connectors and follow the instructions on my site.