When we last saw our (hero, heel, poor slob...) he (me) was slowly dis-assembling my steering column to see what had caused and airbag failure, code 21 (no or inconsistent power to airbag, driver's side).
The general culprit for this is the clock-spring, which i now have a much better appreciation of. In general, the advice is "you cant test it, just replace it". I would now debate that point, but that's a story for another day.
Having roughly zero hope that i could fix much, i have already ordered a good/used clock spring 996.652.211.00. It should be here soon.
What i did was take my airbag out, removed the steering wheel, remove the clock-spring, and cleaned everything. It all was pretty gunky and dusty, so i used air, e-parts cleaner, and then, for exposed contacts cramolin/de-oxit. I put everything back together, put the wheel on crooked, and finally, today, was able to get a box that could read and clear Porsche airbag codes.
note: about a week+ ago a local race shop used their PST2 to read and attempt to reset the code, but it re-appeared instantly. In fact think it rejected the clear.
But today, the code cleared, and the warning light went out. I turned the wheel. It stayed out. I drove home. It stayed out. I took it all apart and straightened ( i hope, its snowing out) the steering wheel. It stayed out. I think its fixed! Dirt!????
Maybe it will re-appear in a day or two. I hope not. Anyway, thanks for all the help along the way.
Grant
ps: since the clock spring seems to be no more than a coil of ribbon cable, its not clear why i could not fix it......what' the magic?
Grant
gee-lenahan-at-gee-mail-dot-com