air bag light on ??

A lot of members are nervous about working around the airbags, possibly for good reasons. But you might have joined TN to avoid having to run down to the dealer every time an idiot light goes on, or at least want to arm yourself with some information before you wander into the scary world of people who want to take your money. Here's how.

You can get the airbag light to flash out its trouble code pretty easily. First, make yourself a short jumper wire. (I used a speaker wire that I crimped a small spade connector on each end, and then snipped off one prong of each spade. But anything will do.)

Locate your OBD connector, it's under the dash well to the left of the steering column above the e-brake pedal (if you have an auto,) and has a black cover on it that says OBD-II I think. Pull off the cover.

Turn on the key. Wait a minute for all the computers to complete their checks and stuff.

Now insert your jumper between terminals 4 and 13. That's the fourth from the left on the top and fifth from the left on the bottom row.

The airbag light is now flashing out a two-digit code. It will do so repeatedly. There may be more than one code. When you have them memorized, disconnect your jumper, then turn off the key. (Supposedly there are some codes that are reset if you turn off the key before you disconnect the jumper, although I've never seen one.)

Now do some research on the codes. The best way is to google Tacoma fsm and find the 05-06 tacoma manual. It will work for any 05+ taco. Browse the Supplemental Restraint section for your code(s) and see if that helps. Each section will contain a trouble-shooting workflow. Generally the first things are to check the connectors for the troubled circuit, and it gets harder from there. If you get in over your head, that's your indication to head to the dealer. But now at least you can talk to them knowledgeably, because you've already done the first couple steps they will do. And it wasn't hard.

Or just return to this thread and post your code. We'll "help" some more.

If you do solve your problem, the fsm also has a procedure to reset the codes, they don't reset themselves. In fact I still have a 43 code from when I forgot to reconnect a connector when I pulled my stereo headunit out. Maybe I should reset that now...

Good luck and have fun!