Wierd AU oddity

[Bushbasher]

A lot of us know about the weird brake light/cruise control oddity with AUs'. well ok, for those that don't, - if one of your brake light globes dies then your cruise control will cease to function, the icon on the dash will light up but it won't maintain a set speed when you hit the steering wheel button, strange but true.

Today I think I discovered a new one, well, the wife did, and kept telling me for weeks what she thought it was but I couldn't see how one could have anything to do with the other. So... For a couple of months now the wagons airbag light on the dash has been intermittently coming on and flashing error 32. Coincidentally, when either I or the wife jumped in the drivers seat and slid it back or forth to adjust it sometimes the light went out. I put it down to the another of those famous AU quirks, that being the sometimes dicky pre-tensioner connection under the seat. Anyway, at about the same time we had the full AC system replaced in the wagon, compressor, accumulator, filters, the lot and after that the fuel economy went away so I put it down to the new AC as it threw an error code saying something like "draw out of range" when I changed the oxygen sensor and had the gas tuned up and a diagnostic done. Anyway, the missus said that when the airbag light was off the fuel economy was ok but every time it came on it used more gas. So the other day I finally changed the clock spring on the off chance that it was this that was causing the airbag error and not the dicky connection under the seat, and what do you know, the airbag light has not come back on, (so it WAS the clock spring), and the economy has immediately jumped from 430-40km to a tank of LPG to 500km. The only conclusion I can make is that somehow the airbag circuit is tied into the ECU, maybe via the oxygen sensor perhaps, who knows, and, it seems, directly affects the fuel consumption. Strange but true.

Has anyone else ever had this experience or noticed this or is it just me?

Bushbasher