Does anyone have experience with installing a new front or rear bumper on a '96 Tracker with Airbags? I'm pretty handy with a welding rod and thought I'd build my own bumpers until I read all the warnings in the service manual about the Airbags. I'd like to keep the Airbags if I could.

Be careful around the airbag sensors, even if the battery is
disconected they can go off, seems they have a backup
just in case the battery gets knocked out of the vehicle
in an accident.

To be totally safe I think if you remove the sensor you
will be fine, most of these sensors are a velocity (spelling?)
type and react to sudden stops, I.E.  impact, so you should be
able to make your bumpers and have airbags too.
Is that like having your cake and eating it too

Darrin

Yep, I read somewhere that even if the battery was disconnected the bags could still blow for up to 45 minutes, ouch!

Does anyone have experience with installing a new front or rear bumper on a '96 Tracker with Airbags? I'm pretty handy with a welding rod and thought I'd build my own bumpers until I read all the warnings in the service manual about the Airbags. I'd like to keep the Airbags if I could.

I have air bags too. Im starting to wonder if they even work!! The sensors on a trackick are behind the front fenders I belive. I know they are not any where around the bumpers. I have slid down hills into trees (ice mud ect) and they have not gone off. I came out of the water tubes at Zukimelt at a high rate of speed and hit a big rock, HARD    and still no airbag. Hopefully I will never need to find out if they work.

Mike

Or you could just take the airbags out once and for all and blow em up at your leisure for fun. Of course this is usually best followed by another steering wheel since without an airbag it'll look kinda stupid and there's also the passenger side one to worry about too.  Just be smart and use a long piece of lamp cord to initiate em at a safe distance, don't want to read about you in the news.  Also, keep in mind that they don't take much juice to set off so you'll want to shunt the leads at all times once you have the harness that plugs into the airbag initiator unplugged so static doesn't potentially trigger one at a time when it could cause you injury.  A friend of mine knows a guy who put one under a mounted spare car tire and it blew it about 20 feet in the air.  They're pretty loud too so doing it out in the boonies might be advisable so you don't attract the unwanted attention of wherever you live's finest.

If your going to take em out, sell them,
they are worth like $400 each, and then
do some nice improvments to your rig.

One word of caution, some motor vehicle
departments check for the airbags as I
think they are Federal required safety
equipment, so don't make it look as if
the bags are gone.

Darrin

Selling the bags could finance the bumpers but I really want to keep them since my family rides with me on weekends. Detonating them would be an excellent idea but an expensive waste, too bad! Since the sensors seem to be away from the factory bumpers I'll start the work and see what happens.