Last night I swapped LimboJuniors car seat back into my car, checked both cars were locked and went to bed.

This morning I got into my car to find fresh air where the airbag would normally be.

Now I’m pretty sure the answer is scumbag related rather than supernatural, but I’m at a loss to know how an airbag can be removed from a locked car with no sign of forced entry and no alarms going off.

F31 Beemer, by the way.

❓

What do you mean airbag? Centre of the steering wheel?

lock frequency scanner. He was probably across the road looking like he was on the phone scanning your frequency when you locked. I always lock by key in the city.

Key cloned?

Didn’t BMW have something where either some crooks got a ‘master key’ or found some weakness or were scanning lock codes?

A colleague of Mrs B had a brand new 3 series stolen. The theives walked up, unlocked it, got in, started it first time, drove it onto a recovery truck and drove it away. The rightful owners still had both keys, so it wasn’t a fishing-rod-through-the-letterbox job.

peculiar (and potentially) dangerous thing to try and steal. Did they disconnect the battery?

Why? Just disconnect the wires to the bag.

Yep. Steering wheel’s there, the airbag has been prised out so there’s a hole with some dangling wires.

I believe it’s a nkown issue with that particular type of cloning, have you spoken to a dealer, as I’m sure there was an upgrade that was being carried out.. Have you been on the Bimmer forums?

Why? Just disconnect the wires to the bag.

They can go off if you start messing about with the wires and you don’t know what you are doing. I wouldn’t want to be playing with something with an explosive charge in it if it was still connected to a live power source.

YMMV

peculiar (and potentially) dangerous thing to try and steal

Not that peculiar, I’ve just had the estimate, the bloody thing’s up to a grand plus the VAT! turns out they’re quite a lucrative thing to steal. 😯

How much would it be for a cushion and some duct tape?

here you go

http://www.bmwland.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=112355&start=60

read the bottom, you can get a security upgrade, but it’s not guaranteed.

Sorry to hear about you “loss”, they must be a high value easy sell item.

edit, beaten to it – slow typing and a phone call.

lock frequency scanner. He was probably across the road looking like he was on the phone scanning your frequency when you locked. I always lock by key in the city.

These only work on very old cars, all modern systems using rolling codes, so once a code has been used it’s obsolete and the next one in the sequence must be used. The sequence is unique to each car….

Oooof from about £300 on ebay depending on model.
Should only be a 2 minute job to fit though – but I guess you’ll need to have the codes read and cleared too.

ock frequency scanner. He was probably across the road looking like he was on the phone scanning your frequency when you locked. I always lock by key in the city.

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGZ1fwKcEmc[/video]

There are many things I’d cheerfully buy from ebay. I’m not convinced that a driver’s side airbag is one of them.

(Passenger side, perhaps…)

Oooof from about £300 on ebay depending on model

There is a very real chance I would be buying back my own airbag.

My employer will be picking up the bill thank goodness. If it was me I’d be rocking quietly in the corner, not posting on here!

Unfortunately, since we stopped having a justice system that actually delivers any justice (just in case it might hurt someones human rights or offend someone or something) it’s easy for these people to make a better living committing crimes like this than getting a proper job. You can put all the “security” you like in place on cars, but while the system favours the lazy/morally deficient it will continue to occur.

There are many things I’d cheerfully buy from ebay. I’m not convinced that a driver’s side airbag is one of them.

Unless you only drive brand new cars and/or do all your own servicing, then you’ll never know where the parts really come from.

To be fair, an airbag is a pretty simple bit of kit with plenty of failsafes designed in. If it’s got a fault, it will usually show up as a light/code pretty quickly*

*not that I recently spent a significant amount of time diagnosing an airbag fault on a BMW or anything 👿

Airbag is a pretty simple bit of kit, but the system just looks for the correct resistance in the circuit. Its very common when removing a double passenger seat from a van, to just wire a resistor into the missing seatbelt pre-tensioner. So the light being off doesn’t mean the bag is a good unit or out of a flood damaged car.

Unless you only drive brand new cars and/or do all your own servicing, then you’ll never know where the parts really come from.

True, but I’ll wager that your average motor manufacturer has a stricter quality control policy than some random scrote on eBay.

I’ll wager your airbag was stolen to order. People buy cheap CAT C/D write offs and then spend as little money as possible “fixing” them, and sell them on for a vast profit. Paying some scum £50 to nick the exact airbag they need to replace is much less hassle/cheaper than any other route to achieving that…….

maxtorque – Member
I’ll wager your airbag was stolen to order. People buy cheap CAT C/D write offs and then spend as little money as possible “fixing” them, and sell them on for a vast profit. Paying some scum £50 to nick the exact airbag they need to replace is much less hassle/cheaper than any other route to achieving that…

My thought exactly; possibly even some muppet who’s tail-ended someone else’s car, doing minimal structural damage, but triggering the airbag, thus looking for the cheapest possible replacement, probably via some scally mate.