New Problem with On*Star

[tnpartsguy]

After shopping tonight, my wife and I got into the car, after a few minutes, I noticed the XM was on, but not the radio. I hit the power button, and got....nothing.... pushed the CD eject button, and the radio came back to life. Then i noticed that the light on the On*Star....normally green, was bright red! I hit the Blue On*Star button, and an advisor ran a diagnostic on the On*Star system (the only system they can check remotely on the Vibe, btw) and asked me if I had any air bag warning lights...I told her no, there was no light in the IP for the driver side, and the passanger side was showing ON, and not blinking or anything. She said I need to take the car to the dealership ASAP, there is a communication error of some sort in the interface between On*Star and the car..... and that the Air Bag system might not function at this time....

[ragingfish]

Interesting.I've had issues with the onstar going red on me after disconnecting the mirror...i hit the phone button to go into onstar mode, then hit the phone again to go back to normal mode, and it returns to green. That's definitely weird with your issue though...However, I would suspect the advisor is wrong.I can't see how a comm error between onstar and the SIR system can cause the SIR system to completely disable.My instincts tell me that the SIR system would work normally, but that onstar wouldn't be notified.Let us know what the findings are though...

[vibebob]

I agree with ragingfish in that I don't see a "connection" between OnStar and the airbag system... doesn't the airbag work off of accelerometers / crash detectors ? aren't they supposed to work even in the event of a total electrical failure ?

[ragingfish]

Quote, originally posted by vibebob »I agree with ragingfish in that I don't see a "connection" between OnStar and the airbag system... doesn't the airbag work off of accelerometers / crash detectors ? aren't they supposed to work even in the event of a total electrical failure ?That's a good point vibebob...I do know that the SIR system has a power retention system to hold enough power to deploy for approximately 2-5 minutes after a total electrical loss...

[tnpartsguy]

OK, the interface module WAS the problem; the Vibe's have a 'handshake' module between the car, and the ONStar box, and that is what went bad, and as Mike thought, the airbag system was working fine (except the passenger seat sensor had to be recalibated), it just would not have known about airbag deployment.And, of course, all other problems returned "Unable to Duplicate" but of course the noise was present when I picked the car up, last night, after hours.......grrrr