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© 1998 Brian F. Schreurs
Even we have a disclaimer.

The subject vehicle is Paradise Garage's 1993 Pontiac Bonneville with a driver's side air bag. Most GM vehicles operate the same way; even other manufacturers are probably similar. Note that this is a potentially dangerous operation, so please be careful!

Disconnect the battery. Ours is a side-poster and the wrench needed was a 5/16.

Wait 30 minutes. The air bag is equipped with a capacitor and it's important to make sure that it is completely discharged before continuing. We changed the oil while waiting.

Here is the fuse panel in the lowered position.

Remove the air bag fuse. On this car, the fuse box is below the driver's left knee; it folds down by squeezing on a couple of tabs near the top of the box. Our car's fuse was #7 but check the diagram on the fuse box lid before pulling the wrong one.

Unscrew this black panel below the steering column to reveal...

...the master air bag circuit!

Drop the "sound insulator panel." This is a plastic panel underneath the steering colum. It goes: steering column; interior-colored panel; black colored panel. The black panel is the one to remove. There are two Phillips screws along the top and two finger-wingnuts along the back (one near the accelerator and one behind the emergency brake).

Fastened to the sound insulator panel is a yellow circuit. This is the air bag circuit. To disconnect the circuit, you'll first have to remove a green "Connector Positive Assurance Lock" which is GMspeak for a safety catch. Both the green catch and the yellow connector are had to pull apart, but they eventually will give.

Congratulations! You just disarmed your air bag. The only problem is, now the air bag light will be on all the time. We haven't dealt with this yet, but we have some ideas (see end notes). In our case, we wanted to completely remove the air bag, so follow along as we continue.

The air bag is fastened to the steering wheel with four Torx screws (T-30), accessible from behind the wheel. They won't come all the way out -- they're retained. Once you have them all loose, the air bag will try to fall out.

The wires at the hub lead from the steering wheel to the air bag module.

The air bag is still connected by one or two wires. The yellow one is the air bag circuit again; it is unplugged the same way as before, except this time the safety catch is blue. Go figure. The other wire (if you have it) is for the steering wheel stereo controls, and it's very reluctant to let go, but it will.

Now you can hold the air bag in your hands! But be careful with it. According to the various warnings, do not drop it; carry it facing away from you; do not store it anyplace which gets hotter than 130 degrees; do not heat it or apply electricity (even static); and most of all, don't fool with it.

This is the air bag with the stereo controls in place. Once you unbolt them, you can't go any further without a razorblade or a drill.

We wanted to fool with it, so we could get the rubber cover off. But, after removing the stereo controls (four more Torx screws, T-15), we found that everything from that point on was riveted together and it couldn't be disassembled without destroying it. We certainly didn't want that.

Foiled, we reassembled everything back the way it was (be sure the horn wire goes back into the deep hole at the upper left corner of the wheel hub). But, we'll be back!

Okay, so for Round One the air bag won. But it's not over yet! Our plan is to find a replacement air bag cover so that we can make it look like the bag is there. So far, no one will sell us one. The dealer was a failure, the junkyards couldn't do it, and the body shops had no idea. So we started to call GM. General Information (313/556-5000) didn't know; Service/Parts Operations (810/606-2000) wouldn't say; and Pontiac Customer Service (800/762-2737) was clueless.

Another possibility is to replace the steering wheel with another one. While no one will admit that it is possible, we had a look at a Grant steering wheel adapter kit for non-air bag Pontiacs and it looked like it might work. The only problem is doing something with the air bag and stereo wires. So we might explore that option later.

Finally, we have some ideas to deal with that annoying air bag light. The easiest thing to do is pull it, but while effective, it hardly seems satisfying. We read about finding the resistance the air bag circuit is expecting and then installing a resistor at that level, but we haven't tried it yet. If you want to try it, our friend and advisor Walter Acker IV says a 3 ohm 1/2-watt resistor will do it.