I was considering upgrading the airbag cover for the steering wheel on my car and in my research I noticed on the oem one there car reliefs designed to break when the airbag is set off. Since the aftermarket replacements may be made of different material and they are often covered in leather or an alcantara-like fabric, would these allow the airbag to operate as designed in an emergency situation? Has anyone ever looked into this or considered it? This is strictly a cosmetic mod but if it actually has a negative impact to the operation of the airbag then it's a no go.
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Aftermarket Airbag Cover - are they safe?
- Thread starter tlr1000
- Start date
Watts_Up
Well-Known Member
I wouldn’t trust it. The same way I don’t trust aftermarket seat covers.
Here's a picture of what I'm talking about. The first 2 are random aftermarket covers. The 3rd one is the back of the OEM cover where you can see the relief channels where the cover is designed to break open. Just seems dangerous to cover this with some fabric whether leather or otherwise.
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Poked around the internet some more and found a good picture of an airbag that has been set off. From the front you can see where the airbag cover breaks which follows the relief channel on the back. I imagine covering this with some additional fabric would be a safety hazard.
Rice&Curry
Member
Considering safety issues I would not recommend adding any cover over the steering wheel airbags.
I meant to reply here. I had no issues with installing my Airbag cover. Here are the factory piece and the custom piece installed. The custom part was made on an original Tesla part which was my main concern.
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Fitment will be perfect but my concern is taking extra fabric to cover up the original which will dampen the way the airbag deploys in an emergency. The relief channels where the airbag cover is designed to break will now have to force it's way through an additional layer of shear resistance. Imagine covering all of the car's airbags with additional fabric glued on or even if you add duct tape on them. The airbags will likely not perform to original spec and therefore impact safety. No one will really know if functionality (as in airbag deployment efficiency) will be impacted without testing with and without.
If the airbag is never deployed, then no issue at all. It does look good though.
