Retrieve/Clear Continuous DTCs

During vehicle operation the air bag diagnostic monitor will detect and store both intermittent and hard failure DTCs in nonvolatile memory. The DTC strategy employed by the air bag diagnostic monitor 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 air bag diagnostic monitor will detect it.

For the air bag diagnostic monitor to determine that a concern no longer exists requires that the concern is absent for up to one minute. The actual detection time-outs vary with each DTC. The DTCs can be retrieved with the New Generation STAR (NGS) tester or equivalent using the retrieve/clear continuous DTCs option. Any DTCs stored in the air bag diagnostic monitor will be displayed on the NGS along with a brief description of the DTC. If no DTCs are present, the NGS Tester will display a SYSTEM PASSED message. This option can also be used to clear DTCs from the air bag diagnostic monitor memory, as long as the concern no longer exists. Once a DTC is logged into the air bag diagnostic monitor memory, it will stay in memory until 80 key cycles have been recorded or until the NGS is used to erase the DTCs. Once 256 key cycles have been recorded since the concern was last detected, the DTC will automatically be removed from memory.