Turned steering wheel... crunch, then airbag light

[volinky]

2004 LX470 here. Last night I was turning around in the driveway and I heard a crunch when turning the steering wheel around all the way to one side. The air bag light came on immediately and has stayed on ever since. I feel like this should be an easy fix if I can find the issue.

Once I drove again, the wheel was considerably off-center, but corrected itself after a few minutes of driving. Is this VGRS thing? It is pretty cool feature but a little annoying at the same time.

Today I used the how to video in this post (very helpful) to get the airbag out and inspect the area behind there. I pulled the steering wheel nut off, but didn't go as far as pulling the steering completely wheel off. I didn't see anything that looked broken.

Any ideas what could've crunched when I was turning the wheel? What can/should be done to fix this and get the airbag light to go off?

 

[nissanh]

Could be the ribbon wire inside the steering wheel. Does your horn, cruse etc., work? All these are powered by the ribbon wire.

 

[volinky]

Everything else works as expected. I did a 2-hour drive home after the crunch. Cruise and horn both worked as expected.

Edit: The ribbon looked fine when I pulled the airbag out.

The crunch seemed to come from the space between the rotating steering wheel and stationary column.

 

[RND1]

This recent post may be helpful:

Scraping noise from behind steering wheel? Could be steering angle sensor...DIY fix.

Airbag light may or may not be related. Often there's a wire that breaks under the drivers seat. Pretty easy DIY. I wrote one up a while back. I'll see if I can find it.

Edit - here it is, but may be unrelated to what's causing your airbag light:

SRS Code 1153 Seat Position Sensor Fix

 

[volinky]

Just to follow up here, I fixed the issue by replacing the clock spring/spiral clock in the steering wheel. After digging around a bit in the forums, I connected some dots and decided my "crunch" sound could have been the clock spring failing. The airbag light made sense as connected to this part too. Techstream showed a code of B0101 related to the air bag.

I bought this part on eBay - CSP6309/3 Airbag Clock Spring For ES300 02-03 ES330 04 GX470 03-04 LX470 02-04 | eBay - and said a prayer that it would work, since it was significantly cheaper than the part found on OEM sites.

After taking the steering wheel off and disconnecting a few wires, I placed the new clock spring in the same position as I removed the old one. Reconnected all the wires and reassembled the steering wheel. When I turned the truck back on, the air bag light was off.

 

[87nm60]

Just to follow up here, I fixed the issue by replacing the clock spring/spiral clock in the steering wheel. After digging around a bit in the forums, I connected some dots and decided my "crunch" sound could have been the clock spring failing. The airbag light made sense as connected to this part too. Techstream showed a code of B0101 related to the air bag.

I bought this part on eBay - CSP6309/3 Airbag Clock Spring For ES300 02-03 ES330 04 GX470 03-04 LX470 02-04 | eBay - and said a prayer that it would work, since it was significantly cheaper than the part found on OEM sites.

After taking the steering wheel off and disconnecting a few wires, I placed the new clock spring in the same position as I removed the old one. Reconnected all the wires and reassembled the steering wheel. When I turned the truck back on, the air bag light was off.

This is really helpful! I had an SRS light come on with the same code. Time to replace the spring.