Air Bags, not Air Suspension ones. . .

[KNIGHTRIDER]

I have a Subaru '87 4WD Turbo Wagon. I was just wondering does my car have air bags, like in the steering wheel??? Because I don't see the usual SRS sign or anything. . . Did the subarus of the 80s come with air bags??? And also what can I do to add one??? If at all, can I change the steering wheel and if so where can I look for one???

 

Thanks,

 

KNIGHT RIDER

[misledxcracker]

None of the 80's subarus ive seen have air bags... ea series, that is.

 

I know the SVX has air bags (had a steering wheel from one on my '86) never got the airbag working though, I prefer not to have them anyway.

 

To add an airbag, I think you need sensors of some sort.. I'll leave it to someone more experienced to answer that question.

 

Legacy, Impreza, SVX... all the newer ones should have airbags. Well, a good portion of 'em at least if not all.

[mikeshoup]

No 80s subaru ever came with an airbag.

 

If you want to put one in, consult a professional. Airbags are dangerous devices if improperly installed.

 

Since your vehicle did not come with one, it doesn't sound like a smart idea / be worth it to install one.

[Ever Victorious]

Air bags are way more than just a steering wheel. there's sensors, computers, chemical propellants/inflatants... the phrase "don't bother" comes to mind.

[Flowmastered87GL]

I agree with the others.

 

Dont try to retrofit to your car. It was designed to be crashworthy as-is.

 

If you feel the need for an airbag. Upgrade to a 1990+ legacy or 1993+ Impreza (some models have bags, some dont so check the wheel for the airbag or SRS markings)

[KNIGHTRIDER]

I agree with the others.

 

Dont try to retrofit to your car. It was designed to be crashworthy as-is.

 

If you feel the need for an airbag. Upgrade to a 1990+ legacy or 1993+ Impreza (some models have bags, some dont so check the wheel for the airbag or SRS markings)

 

How so is the car designed to be crashworthy as-is??? Without the airbag won't i hit the steering wheel if i by chance am in a collision or something??? I am just trying to figure out my options as to if I ever am in an accident.

 

Thanks. . .

[Ever Victorious]

How so is the car designed to be crashworthy as-is??? Without the airbag won't i hit the steering wheel if i by chance am in a collision or something??? I am just trying to figure out my options as to if I ever am in an accident.

 

Thanks. . .

 

Sure, if you're not wearing your seat belt (air bags won't help with this), or if you have an extremely severe or head-on accident.

 

I've been in accidents in both an EA81 wagon as a rear-seat passenger and an EA82 sedan as a driver. Not injured at all in either case, both were about 25 MPH collisions. Enough to destroy the tailgate on the EA81 and push the bumper in on the EA82 (but not damage the radiator support... any new car, your radiator would be in your intake with that kind of speed)

 

Your seat belt is designed to keep you in place. What an airbag does is slow down your face's approach to the front of the car. You're not LIKELY to hit the steering wheel under normal circumstances. Most severe injuries in vehicles (at least as shown by crash test dummies) occurs when the passenger compartment collapses too much or becomes intruded upon by structure that crumples backward.

 

Your old Subaru is NOT designed with advanced crumple zones like a Legacy, and there is absolutely positivley no way to MAKE them for your car. The frame and body are the way they were designed, which even for its day, was pretty darned safe when you compare them to other cars of the time.

[daeron]

ever since ralph nader killed the corvair, auto makers have been adding more and more safety features to their cars.. gradually lowering fatality rates (ostensibly at least, i dont want to say yay or nay on that subject) from auto accidents, they have increased safety features for marketing reasons. Seatbelts are going to save you about 95% of the time your in an accident, and might have been hurt. Airbags will save you 95% of the time that the seatbelts arent sufficient.. or something like that. probably alot less. My very first car was a 92 geo storm, and it had an airbag. thats the only car ive ever had that had one, and i wasnt worried. i am serious about saying i am Religious about my seatbelt though.

 

if you think you might also be religious about your seatbelt, wait until you roll a car over and your seatbelt is all that saves you...

 

seatbelts kick rump roast, and anyone who doesnt wear theirs deserves to die and heal the human race of their presence. darwin awards all around!!

[Forkspear]

and anyone who doesnt wear theirs deserves to die and heal the human race of their presence. darwin awards all around!!

 

uh, whatever dude

 

I don't like air bags and I don't like to wear my seat belt. Mostly because the government tries to make me. An air bag is almost like a shot gun pointed at me. If you set an air bag face down on the ground and set it off it goes like 30 feet into the air. I don't want that hitting me in the face.

 

Anyway the SRS uses a its own special bright yellow wiring harness with several crash sensors. At school they told us you are not supposed to cut or splice the harness. It has to be replaced if something is wrong. So I dont recommend trying to add airbags because you would probably have to cut the harness and the airbag might blast you in the face if you dont wire it right.

[Numbchux]

I don't like air bags and I don't like to wear my seat belt. Mostly because the government tries to make me.

 

That's the spirit!!! Show 'em what's what!

 

knightrider, your options are where your seatbelt, or eat windsheild. the car absorbs the impact quite well, if you're strapped in, you'll do just fine. not really anything you can do about it

[daeron]

That's the spirit!!! Show 'em what's what!

 

amen. i believe i made my point adequately that im not crazy about airbags either... just that seatbelts keep you strapped in place when your car is for some unanticipated reason rolling around on the ground in a manner that it was TOTALLY not intended to do..... not to mention your more standard, two-vehicle collision accident... Like i said, I used to say i was religious about wearing my seatbelt until i rolled a car... ever since that day, i have really KNOWN what it meant to be religious about wearing my seatbelt.

[torxxx]

ok lets see.. airbags.. count on 3 to 500 dollars a airbag. and then the time it takes to rig the SRS system into a EA82 car, you are looking at 2 grand+.

 

These cars never came with em like everyones said and I say screw airbags. I've slammed my face into the steering wheel hard enough that it bent the steering wheel to the dash. Yes it hurt, but it would have done the same damage to my face with an airbag. Airbags are more of a danger than anythign else. you need to remember that all that is involved in airbag going off is the airbag sensor on the "framerail" right behidn the front bumper being smashed. I've seen cars that cracked a front bumper and that set the airbags off. Lets see, a legacy has a plastic bumper so that took 5 mph to do that damage and boom you set off both airbags. now theres another 3 to 500 per bag to replace them. Not to mention your insurance company is going to consider your car totalled because the airbags went off.

 

just my thoughts

[NoahDL88]

As an ex-seatbelt/airbag engineer with a patent to my name, i can say without hesitation, that in this day and age, you'd be an idiot if you didn't wear a seatbelt, sticking it to the man won't matter when you're dead.

 

Airbags, to answer your question can't be retrofitted to older chassis, they are designed to protect you without airbags, and although not as safe as a car with them, they are designed to protect you without, so don't worry too much, the most important piece of safety equipment is between the seat and the wheel.

 

As far as all these fears of airbags, they are mostly unfounded, people hear from a friend of a friend of a friend who had the slight inconvinence of getting a rug burn on their face when the airbag went off, which is much nicer than having all the bones shatter in your face when you bounce it off the steering wheel, or worse put it through the windshield.

 

I'll admit it, i'm the safety nazi, i'll yell at parents with their kids unbuckled, and yell at adults who are not strapped in, i've seen first hand what even slow speed accidents can do to a vehicle, and everytime i get in a car, no matter where i sit, i buckle up. do i wish death on people who don't buckle up? no, but i do wish that they get the life support unplugged as quick as possible so that my tax money doesn't go to their medical bills. absolutely.

 

 

 

but Noah, i had a friend that survived a crash because he wasn't wearing a seatbelt. Well good for him, he's a 1 in a million long shot, but for the other 999,999 times that seatbelt would have saved him. and in that last instance, he probably would have walked away with less injurys.

 

 

Seatbelts and airbags, cause a rugburn on your face is better than a windshield around your neck.

[Bucky92]

These older Subarus are pretty tough...the only way you are going to eat your steering wheel is if you are in a serious head on..or you arent wearing your seat belt..plain and simple..and if you are wearing your seatbelt and are in a serious head on ..hard enough for you to still eat your steering wheel ..even an airbag isnt going to help you much..A perfect example on how tough these cars are is the one girl here on the board had a BEAUTIFUL Gen1 brat..got broadsided or something...rolled a few times..Brat was totalled..she is still with us..and if you saw the pics of the Brat you couldnt understand how she survived.

Airbags are a pain..and if you ever have one go off...if the car is repairable its costs a fortune to replace.

[NoahDL88]

..and if you are wearing your seatbelt and are in a serious head on ..hard enough for you to still eat your steering wheel ..even an airbag isnt going to help you much...

 

Actually, thats exactly what there designed to do. A 2 liter bag popping out from the front seat can raise a side crash rating from a 2 star to a 5 star, you'd be surprised what a little air and fabric can do to protect you in an accident.

[Ever Victorious]

And FYI if the air bags deploy in a 5-10MPH accident, there is a defect in the system. There is a threshhold standard, and that standard is at 17MPH. Any impact of total speed difference less than this is not supposed to deploy them, and equal to or greater is supposed to deploy them.

 

And a properly working system will stick to that properly... our Hyundai suffered an accident last year where my wife rear-ended a pickup on the freeway, with an approximate 15 MPH difference. Damaged the front end pretty severely (as it is designed to), but did NOT deploy the driver's airbag (passenger airbag was off because no weight was in the seat)

[RONAN]

Just to add to this from a safety stand point on frontal crashes. I saw a manufacturers letter dealing with crumple zones during a frontal crash. It is imperative that the spare tire under the hood be in place and secured. The tire acts as a key to the collapsement. Just another 2 cents of advice....

[xoomer]

Just recieved the $101.00 dollar ticket... because I was wearing my seatbelt under my shoulder? Due to the fact that in the 2 car accidents I was in I screwed up that shoulder, and The pain that I would be in would be much less than if I was wearing the shoulder belt.

 

hit the windshield +2

[daeron]

.... THAT sucks. i have gotten no seatbelt tickets when i had the seatbelt on... either the cop thought he saw me putting it on as i was being pulled over, or she was mad because she thought i was drunk and pulled me over (i was grabbing for the cigarette lighter that had popped ALL the way out in the floor) but the other cop did the "keep your eye on the pen" test and walked away chuckling that she thought i was drunk... so she wrote me one.. ive gotten them for "instead of" a speeding ticket, and ive gotten them "instead of" .. ahem, other things.

 

But having to go pay a ticket for a seatbelt, when you are a serious seatblet believer.. ESPECIALLY if you say that the proper way is worse for you than improperly, as you had it on.. (not to sound like a jerk stating the obvious, but..) next time try and slip your arm into the right place.. because they are technically right, even if you say the law is wrong for you... yanno?

[scrap487]

I don't like air bags and I don't like to wear my seat belt. Mostly because the government tries to make me.

 

have you ever been in a rollover? doesnt sound like it. I have and I was lucky there was a tree in the way to stop it or I'd be another statistic because I wasnt wearing mine. I've watched a couple friends roll a dodge truck at SLOW speeds, less than 15mph, rolled twice. driver was wearing his seatbelt, my other friend wasnt and was flung from the vehicle on the first roll, he was lucky he only punctured a lung got a severe concussion and fractured his hip. Another one of my friends dad rolled their older bronco just recently coming back from estecada, he wasnt wearing his seatbelt and they had the top off. His dad was killed and his passanger who wasnt wearing his seatbelt either is still in critical condition on lifesupport. I've seen a few bad car wrecks that resulted with later model CARS(not trucks) being completely demolished and rolled several times, it was only the seatbelts and airbags that allowed the victims to walk away from the wrecks completely unharmed. If you have a problem with the government, find a better way to protest because when you get hurt in an accident you will just become another statistic supporting thier laws.