Sweet Turbo S!! Love those wheels, what a great look. Sorry, no help on the steering wheel question, as the only time I swapped steering wheels was for a MOMO non-air bag wheel.
Mk4 3 Spoke Steering wheel Swap to 04 NB Turbo S
I bought a MK4 leather 3 spoke sport wheel to install on my 04 Turbo S.
After getting the OEM steering wheel off, I noticed that the Beetle steering wheel has 2 airbag connectors, and the 3 spoke steering wheel has 1 center connector to the airbag.
Would this be resolved by simply getting an airbag wiring harness from the clock spring to the airbag from a MK4 that uses a single connector?
I’ve searched and haven’t found a definitive answer. It seems like people have encountered this issue before, but on all of the forums, there never seems to be a follow up post explaining how they ended up getting it to work.
Any help is appreciated!
Pic of the car for reference
![Wheel Tire Car Vehicle Volkswagen new beetle]()
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
After getting the OEM steering wheel off, I noticed that the Beetle steering wheel has 2 airbag connectors, and the 3 spoke steering wheel has 1 center connector to the airbag.
Would this be resolved by simply getting an airbag wiring harness from the clock spring to the airbag from a MK4 that uses a single connector?
I’ve searched and haven’t found a definitive answer. It seems like people have encountered this issue before, but on all of the forums, there never seems to be a follow up post explaining how they ended up getting it to work.
Any help is appreciated!
Pic of the car for reference
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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I’m guessing you have an earlier year beetle then?
I completed the job now, so for anyone that searches for this in the future here is what I’ve found.
Early beetles 98-02 I believe had the single stage airbag, so any mk4 single stage airbag would swap over.
Not sure when exactly it changed, but the 04 Turbo S beetles have a 2 stage airbag in the steering wheel. So when you pull the airbag off there are two airbag plugs instead of one. (One for a lower speed impact, and one for a higher speed impact from what I understand)
So what I did was cut off the yellow (low speed airbag) connector from the beetle steering wheel harness, and cut off the airbag connector from the 3 spoke wheel and spliced it to the low speed airbag wires. This airbag now would get the same voltage from that one plug as stock beetle one would get and ignite under a collision.
I then soldered a 2.2ohm resistor to the high speed airbag connector.
I also had cut and solder together the horn wires since they also have different connectors.
Put it all back together and it looks great, an no airbag lights!
So for anyone with a beetle that has a 2 stage airbag, it is possible, just not a direct swap. The whole thing took me about 45 minutes.
Happy to answer anyone’s questions on this in the future!
I kind of answered most of those questions and the questions I initially posted, in my previous post just above now that I have it working correctly.
I don’t know what year the 3 spoke was out of. But yeah it was a single stage and my beetle is a dual stage. I ended up using the beetle clockspring and wiring, while soldering on the mk4 airbag connector to one, and using a resistor in the other beetle airbag connector.
Like I mentioned in my initial post, I have seen it done, but when searching, most posts asked the same questions I did, with the OP never coming back to answer how they completed it.
So hopefully anyone searching this topic in the future will wind the answer here!
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