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Hi all After praising new cars reliability etc etc. within minutes my airbag light had lit up. Tried turning the engine off re-starting, no luck. Having remembered that some times the CanBus gets itself in a twist, i disconnected the battery and waited half hour and re-connected. The light was still on. Further more whenever i disconnect my battery and reconnect and try to start the engine, it seems to loose its default ECU map and needs me to drive the car at speed for about 20mins. In that time if i i have to stop at lights etc, the engine rev's drop so low it nearly stalls and is difficult to recover being a multidrive. Anyway by 20mins the map is re-built and all is well. Back to the Airbag, i connected my TIS software and interrogated the Airbag ECU for error codes. It found an error with the driver side Squib ( whatever that is). Saying it had a short to earth. After a lot of looking through the workshop manual,it describes in detail that it is either the bag under the steering wheel or the spiral cable ( so you can turn the steering wheel without trashing the wires) or the airbag near your knees. What it also said was that sometimes either bouncing relays or a sudden bump for 1/2 a sec can trigger an alarm. So i went back in and reset the code in memory and all is well. So just thought i would let you know. These severe speed bumps can cause your Air bags to put a fault code in memory and you are likely to have to pay your dealer £75 to reset it David

one other thing to watch is, if you take the route of buying an self contained jump starter, beware that some of the more expensive ones are too clever for their own (or your!) good. I know someone who bought a 'smart' one that checked the polarity when connected before it would supply any power, which sounds sensible to avoid damage, but it the battery in the car to be started was totally flat it refused to supply power. My cheap and cheerful Maplin one (now about 10 years old) was not so fussy and would start the car.

That is one to lock in he memory banks for future reference if needed. Thanks David

The trouble is, is the fact you have them in some way linked to insurance. After all, if it prevents you from a fatality then the insurance payment is maybe with ref to that. If after 10 yrs they are deemed un trusted and you are given the opportunity to still use them then, then its possible that the insurance company's would pull together and refuse insurance or make it astronomical but probably have no effect on classic cars that don't have any anyway. They use anything to rip you off with David

I used to carry a 12v 7AH Yuasa battery fitted with crocodile clips in the centre console. It was perfectly adequate for starting the 2nd gen Prius. Positive to the jumpstart terminal in the fusebox, negative to any part of the bodywork or engine and away it went. Have to make sure you can actually get into the car in order to get at the fusebox under the bonnet (hood if you're in the US), of course. If those manual door locks haven't been used for five years they'll probably be quite tough to move...its a good idea to get into the habit of using the key to physically lock/unlock the doors manually once a month.

My step father had a head on smash in a 14 year old Renault a couple years ago. The airbags all worked a treat and everyone walked away with no lasting injury. I fear the 10 year rule is like the 2 year BBE date on a tin of beans. They'll probably work well after 10 years but the further past that time the more luck will be part of the equation. Still, so long as you're aware and happy about that, then what's the problem. People still drive Model T's or Ford Anglia's and even Morris Marina's, yet such cars are deadly by todays standards. I'd rather have a world why you take the chance. If you don't want to drive in a car over 10 years old, then buy a new one. And if we're going on the subject of scrapping cars after 10 years, what good does that do for the environment? Surely it's better to keep a car going than buy a new one? It's just a cynical attempt and getting people to buy crap French cars.