Clearing Diagnostic Trouble Codes

During vehicle operation, the Restraints Control Module (RCM) will detect and store both intermittent and hard failure DTCs in nonvolatile memory. The DTC strategy employed by the RCM incorporates a time-out scheme for determining when a concern exists in the system. This requires a concern to exist for up to one minute in the system before the RCM will detect it. For the RCM to determine that a concern no longer exists, the concern must be absent for up to one minute. The actual detection time-outs vary with each DTC. The DTCs can be retrieved with the scan tool. Any DTCs stored in the RCM will be displayed on the scan tool along with a brief description of the DTC. If there are no DTCs present, the scan tool will display a SYSTEM PASSED message. This option can also be used to clear DTCs from the RCM memory, as long as the concern no longer exists. Once 256 key cycles have been recorded since the concern was last detected, the DTC will automatically be removed from memory.

NOTE: Once cleared, DTCs cannot be retrieved. Make note of any DTCs displayed before clearing.

To retrieve or clear DTCs, use the instructions for the scan tool being used. The scan tool will scan and display any hard DTCs remaining after clearing. Because hard DTCs cannot be cleared from the RCM, they will be redisplayed after using the clearing function.