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Yes, that makes perfect sense.
What I'm referring to is not a malfunctioning airbag, but an airbag that has a bad charge, low charge, or has some sort of other non-diagnostic defect. They aren't common at all, but they do happen from time to time. I just noted that as an aside to my main post, in case the original poster had thought perhaps there was a defective airbag itself. I recently saw an S70 with ONE airbag deployed, driver's side. ANd on other makes, I have seen it here and there. I've even seen partial deployments, with the airbag mostly out but not totally. While the systems are quite good most of the time, they aren't without their own little troubles.
There are so many factors in airbag deployment that it's hard to gauge what cause and effect go together. A lot of times serious collisions yield no airbag deployment. It all hinges on what angle the hit is taken at, and the rate of deceleration/acceleration of that particular hit.
But back to what I was saying: If the SRS light is on due to an anomaly of some sort within the system, the entire system waits for it to be corrected before being active. That's presumably so that there isn't a worse malfunction in case of some sort of accident, and to alert the driver that the system is non-functional. It's both a safety factor and, I'm sure, a liability one as well.
Changing out an airbag wheel will deactivate every single airbag in the car. It also deactivates the pyrotechnic seat belts that are a function of the SRS system. The front collision sensor triggers the front airbags and the seat belts. The side impact sensor triggers the side airbags and probably the seat belts as well, but I can't remember offhand. One more reason why wheel changeouts aren't very advisable in the airbag-equipped cars, especially the dual airbag cars and the ones with side airbags. The older, single bag cars were a lot less complex and I don't think they had exploding belts either--at least the Volvo ones.
As I had mentioned in the first post, you can have really weird sets of circumstances. A car with all over damage--one that spun and hit just about every corner of the car--can have perfectly intact airbags. I've hooked a jump start box on a car with good airbags, but totally annhilated body, and found that the SRS light comes on just like it should, and shuts off, indicating an intact system. After all of those hits.
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Chris Herbst, near Chicago, IL. 93 940, 91 240, 90 240, 88 740, 87 240
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