Car hit around 81,300 miles, and the airbag light came on first, later went out and was replaced by a purely torturous high pitch noise from under the dash, biased on the left side. I searched and check factory manuals and found no mention of this noise. Any info would be appreciated, car is not driveable with the noise.
Thanks
Kevin
Still sequential

 

Most likely the airbag computer, it's on the driver's side of the center tunnel under the dash.

Dale

 

Thanks for the quick reply Dale, that confirms the likely source of the intolerable noise. I've seen the general components of the system in the FSMs, but no mention of this warning noise.

Has anyone ever heard this? I guess it's an indication of a an airbag system malfunction. I've read in FSM about troubleshooting codes, based on number of light flashes. Is that something a part's store guy can read?

Thanks again Dale.

 

Dig into the shop manual on airbag troubleshooting. Generally the system does pretty well, there's not a lot of easy "look at this first" things to go on.

None of the systems in an FD can be scanned by the guy at the parts store, the FD is pre-OBD-2 unfortunately.

Worst case, pull the system out of the car. 1st generation airbags weren't fantastic by any stretch of the imagination. Remove the computer and the airbag light is the easy way to do so. Depends on your comfort level with it.

Dale

 

Try contacting Fritz Flynn here on the forum to see if he has a good, used Air Bag diagnostic module (assuming you did nothing out of the ordinary to trigger any of the peripheral sensors). These "computers" are known to go bad after some time; mine failed similarly.

Unfortunately, a new diagnostic module is no longer available from Mazda or other similar outlets. Fritz should be able to hook you up with a known good one at a very reasonable price, though!

 

Thanks for the tips guys. I will look at the Body/Elec Manual again for troubleshooting. Found this DIY for repairing the module ... I've done this type of work on an old Panasonic tv dvr:
Module Rebuild
I've watched a bunch of Fritz's videos from track days, the FD and current GT3. Just after I was asked to be an instructor at Summit Point Raceway, I got a rare foot pain disease that ended my track days, but I still "let it breath" on weekends at the local, limited access highways.