Ever since I bought my car, the warning light for the airbag system has been on. While rooting around under the dashboard one day, I found a yellow wiring connector that wasn’t hooked up. Yellow is the color for all airbag wiring and connectors. After I plugged it in the light was still on, so I figured there must’ve still been a problem.

The best way to find out what the problem was would be to hook up a good scan tool and read the codes in the airbag system, but I didn’t have one. Luckily, my car, a 1997 Honda Civic, has an alternative way to read the codes. There’s a wiring connector under the dash on the passenger side, and you stick a pin between the two sockets on the connector and turn the car on, and the SRS light will blink a certain number of times to tell you what the code is.

I never got around to finding that connector until a week ago, and I got an 8-5 code, but all the repair manual said was “internal failure.” I took it to work and plugged in a Honda scan tool, and found that it was an 8-5 code for an internal failure, but it was only a history code, not a current, so I erased it, which turned off the light. That connector I had found earlier had probably been the problem, I just never reset the system to turn the light off.

Now I just need to fix a leak in the evaporative emissions system so my check engine light will turn off.

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-Dan