How to reset Nissan 350Z SRS light on after replacing clock spring?
Car model and year: GT - 2006 Nissan 350Z RevUp DE
Note : GT model of 350z has a traction control whereas the base models don‘t (apparently). So, if you have a GT, you‘ll get a clock spring with a smaller hole which plugs into the SAS.
Purpose:
Change the clock spring to try and fix the air bag light issue (fairly sure it‘s this as my ‘volume up‘ and ‘seek up‘ buttons have died on my wheel).
What I did:
Before, I installed the 25567-ET025 fine without issues but found it doesn‘t connect to the Steering Angle Sensor (SAS) (the hole is too big).
Everything else works fine but if you turn the wheel without the SAS turning then traction control goes haywire and the car will brake (it thinks you‘re massively spinning out) .
And Nissan told me to get the "B5567-CF42E" for my car as it has a SAS in it. If I‘d bought this first time, I would have saved weeks of pain.
When I put in my car number Nissan Parts Deal comes up with a match on 25567-ET025:
As does Courtesy Parts:
Advice:
- IIRC, the only Zs that have the VDC are manuals. The VDC works off the Yaw sensor, which automatic Zs don‘t have.
The clock spring should fix your airbag issue if, of course, there‘s no other faults.
Please be sure to keep your wheels pointed straight, your steering wheel being in correct when you start dismantling it....there are indicators on both the wheel and shaft to align it back up.....even with those I managed to get off by one tooth which cocked the wheel about 10 degrees....had to do the job twice.
But another important thing to note is DO NOT LET THE SPRING ROTATE! I believe it comes taped down and letting it spin, even if you have the wheel perfectly aligned, will cause all sorts of lights to come on because the computer will read the vehicle as going in a direction other than straight.
Also, someone said:
indeed the clock spring will come with a clip that keeps things aligned.....
OP DO NOT remove this clip until the very end of the job when you have NO CHOICE but to do so to get the spring in the right spot and button everything up....you‘ll know when to pull the clip.
What I tried to do until succeed?
01-30-2020 update:
My garage has also kindly offered to use their proper scanner thing on it too. I doubt it‘ll be possible to ‘clear‘ a code on there as the Nissan SRS manuals says this has to be done via the self-diagnostic you mention (it should just clear the code instead of going into diagnostic mode).
Okay, so probably some good learnings for future forum members having the same issues. Here‘s what I did to debug:
- Firstly, my garage are v friendly so pulled the actual air bag error code for me - it was this one (FYI you can‘t clear it in any other way than self-diagnostic ignition method:
It was B1052 which confirms an issue with the driver air bag. I should focus there probably.
*BTW this procedure is exactly documented in the Nissan SRS manual - it‘s:
- turn on the ignition until air bag light disappears then turn it off immediately (i.e. before it flashes on again)
- wait at least 3 seconds
- repeat 2 more times
- Turn on the ignition
- I took my old clock spring and used a multi-meter to test whether the continuity was blown between the airbag plug connections (both the orange + yellow ones)
- I found that only 1 of the 4 prongs (2 on yellow, two on orange) was outputting to one of the pins on the opposite side of the clock spring (after all, if the airbag connector doesn‘t go through the clock spring - its not doing its job)
- I then took out the newly installed clock spring to check I hadn‘t broken it (using the Nissan plastic clip** which came with it to fix the clock spring in place)
- I then stuck a tiny screwdriver into the new clock spring air bag connections (all 4 on the yellow + orange connectors) one at a time and then tested to see if the signal went through to any of the pins
- I also noted which pins the yellow connector went through to and which ones the orange ones went to (my air bag only has two pins on it so I was curious to see whether for some reason had a clock spring routing the air bag through to the wrong pins). Here is the result:
**I agree with the principal of never use winding the clockspring - fully left, fully right and then half way - to calculate the centre point. It comes already in the middle with a plastic fitting to hold it in place until you fit it. Winding it seems to tempt fate of stretching the cables so I don‘t see the value.
- All four of the pins routed through correctly so I knew there was no problem with my clock spring
- I then went to the car and noted down what the air bag cable in the car going into the clock spring (not between the clock spring and the air bag - from the car to the clock spring, i.e. to air bag module which tells the car if there‘s an issue or not) was doing, i.e. which pins on the clock spring was that yellow car-side plug using? As you can see in the picture above (top-right) the car plug was using the same pins as the yellow air bag connector was routing through to. This way, I knew that I had the right clock spring and that the yellow air bag connector is definitely the one to go through to the air bag (I know its all color coded in yellow so it shouldn‘t be the orange one - but it‘s nice to confirm exactly what‘s going on)
Next:
- Now I know the clock spring is routing correctly, I bought an air bag resistor to just see whether plugging that into the clock spring instead of the air bag would work (I wasn‘t expecting much but if it did work - it points to a problem with the air bag itself):
- I reconnected everything except for the air bag (inc the electrics) and switched to user-diagnostic mode (using the the self-diagnostic mode). If there was still an issue, it‘d show me the error code (1 long + 2 shorts - i.e. driver air bag module issue).
- Hey presto - code cleared!
- Next, I thought it must be the air bag so a £60 second-hand one should do the trick. But first, I got the air bag out again just to check it over.
- I noticed that the black click‘y bit on the connector plug was still sticking out
- I disconnected the air bag connector and tried to push that bit in - wouldn‘t budge
- So, I thought I‘ll just reconnect it and push it in hard - boom...it clicked in!
After that, reconnected everything and tried self-diagnostic mode again and it‘s cleared!
I thought I‘d share that as a nice way to logically try and solve issues.
Next up...the traction control is totally hay-wire (even though I know the wheel/clock spring is definitely aligned correctly. Turns out that the bit you take off the old clock spring and reattach to the new one is the steering wheel angle sensor:
Definitely don‘t want to be buying another one of those! I was sure I reconnected it correctly but I reckon I must have done something stupid so back to re-opening the whole thing to check it‘s all connected properly! I do have 2 screws left over from the job and they definitely should be in there somewhere!
I‘ll report back with my findings. Hopefully, either I‘ve connected it wrong and it‘ll work OR I connected it fine and the angle needs resetting by my garage.
02-02-2020 update:
I‘d recommend running the airbag self diagnostic procedure to see what error you get (download the SRS manual to what the code means) and see if that helps narrow it down. You may end up needing to take the clock spring out and checking the continuity of the air bag cables like I did but it‘s genuinely not that hard once you‘ve done it once.
I‘ve done it quite a few times now and you can do the whole thing in about 30m once you know how to do it.
Here‘s what you‘d need:
- 1/4" drive ratchet
- 1/4" drive 10mm socket
- 1/2" drive torque wrench
- 1/2" drive breaker bar
- 1/2" drive 19mm socket
- 1 philips screwdriver (decent length)
- 1 flat-head screwdriver (decent length)
- 1 small headed screwdriver (to unscrew the Steering Angle Sensor and switch it to the new Clock Spring)
- 1 x T30 security torx 1/4" drive socket because the first one I got was cheap and just snapped)
- 1 screwdriver which can run 1/4" drive (for the T30)
Tips!
- Don‘t wear any jewellery (so you don‘t scratch your car)
- Don‘t wear shoes (so you don‘t mark the inside of the car)
- When you plug in the airbag - make sure you *click* it so it‘s all closed and nicely tight. I put it back together without plugging it in properly and wondered why the airbag light wouldn‘t reset!
The resistor I got ran into the clock-spring, but if it‘s an issue with the under seat connectors you‘d need to figure out a way to run that into the yellow plugs under each seat.
02-02-2020 Update:
Okay, update. Turns out I didn‘t have 2 screws left over - they were from my original Clock Spring to connect it to the car. Phew. Here‘s the lowdown on the steering angle sensor:
- I took off the steering angle sensor and was wondering how I could have got it wrong - there‘s only one way to fit it (the screws make sure of that)
- I remembered what Z33Garage said about aligning the ‘tabs‘ so I thought I‘d have a look at the video again
- The steering angle sensor actually has moving parts even when it‘s all fixed in. This means:
if you turn the moving part on the angle sensor at all when changing the steering angle sensor - it‘s going to be almost impossible to align it back to exactly where it is
Once I turned it, I had no idea where 0‘ was so I‘ve got no hope of re-aligning it - I‘ll have to get the angle reset to 0‘c via a Nissan Consult or something similar. Luckily, my garage is pretty friendly and will do this for free probably.
You might be able to figure out a way to ensure it aligns perfectly to what it was previously but because there are no hard alignment pieces, you‘ll have to be 100% sure that your new clock spring is aligned in the same way the old one was and that you don‘t spin the sensor at all. To be fair, if you reattach the wheel to exactly where it was (not hard) then in theory it should all be the same as long as you don‘t manually turn the internal bit of the sensor. I just didn‘t know what I was doing.
Next steps:
- My battery is flat again so I need to charge it up again
- Then, I‘ll make sure the air bag light is still cleared / reset again if needed
- I‘m going to use my OBDII scanner to see if I can see what the steering wheel thinks its angle is - hopefully it‘ll be way out
02-04-2020 update:
Okay, good news is that the air bag light has gone for good so clearly the clock spring was the issue/is fine now.
Now, the TCS etc was still going haywire even after my local garage apparently reset the SAS (Steering Angle Sensor). However, they did say they couldn‘t read the angle which makes me think that either (a) it‘s broken (I doubt this - I‘ve just swapped it between Clock Springs and they‘re solid) or (b) their OBD tool isn‘t quite compatible with the 350z.
I tried downloading Nissan Data Scan II for Android but don‘t bother as it‘s just not got the right stuff to work via an Bluetooth OBD2 scanner - the "Work Support" feature can‘t access the ABS module (which reads the SAS).
If you have a Windows laptop I‘m sure you could download the proper Nissan Data Scanner software but I read a lot of good things about the Foxwell NT650 handheld OBD2 tool and people using that to clear codes. I found one of those for £125 online so rather than a one-off hit with Nissan of £56 (plus driving there and back etc) I thought I‘d be better off giving it a go with that and I‘ll have this nice device which will help me in the future too:
02-06-2020 update:
- everything is pointing towards me probably should have buying the part number Nissan recommended: B5567CF42E.
- I put in my old clockspring (now my MOT has passed) and just disconnected air bag for time being
- The Foxwell NT650 Elite is really good too. I can read the live steering angle properly and reset it correctly too.
03-06-2020 update:
Correct Clock Spring from Nissan (B5567-CF42E) worked perfectly. Also used my Foxwell NT650 to reset the steering angle sensor (just to be sure) but technically, if you keep the clock spring in the same position you left the old one in - you shouldn‘t need to do a Steering Angle Sensor (SAS) reset.
Hope it helps!
Credits Rajtastic.
SOUCE:http://www.foxwellsupport.com/how-to-reset-nissan-350z-srs-light-on/