How to Replace Airbag Clock Spring 1988-98 GMC Sierra K1500

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In this video, we're going to be working with our 1996 GMC Sierra K1500. We're going to show you how to remove and replace your vehicle's airbag clock spring, which is responsible for the operation of the driver's airbag as well as your horn. If you like this video, please click subscribe. We have a ton more information on this and many other vehicles. If you want this part for your car, you can follow the link down in the description over to 1AAuto.com.

Here are the items you'll need for this repair: 8-21mm socket, ratchet, socket extension, 8mm wrench, breaker bar, torque wrench, T25 Torx socket, E5 inverted Torx, flathead screwdriver, steering wheel puller, side cutters, snap ring pliers, 90 degree pick tool, zip ties

Remove the negative post from your battery using a 5/16s or an eight millimeter wrench. Be very careful, this wrench isn't long enough but if you have a longer one, you may be able to hit the positive battery terminal with it. You want to be very careful you don't do that. Remove the terminal and isolate it from the battery.

Now just so you can see, because it's pretty difficult to show on the back of the steering wheel, there are these notched pins, all four of them on the airbag and these sit in these four holes. What I did to release them is there's openings in the back you can reach through, the flat blade screwdriver and pry them up and out of the way. Pretty difficult to get back there and see that, but you just need to reach in there and pry it out of the way with your screwdriver and it'll pop itself up. Remove the airbag.

There's a little hook on the harness, you need to disconnect to get this out all the way. Remove the orange safety. You may need a screwdriver to release the electrical connector here. Put your seatbelt through the steering wheel. This will help to hold it while you break the 21-millimeter bolt in the center loose. Release your seatbelt and remove it from the wheel. Make sure that the steering wheel is nice and straight and flat. Finish removing the 21-millimeter nut and wiggle the wheel or hit the back sides.

Now if you can't just knock the steering wheel off by hand, you can use a steering wheel polar. This is actually kind of a universal polar. These are available from 1AAuto.com, the same one we have here and it comes with a variety of bolts so pick the ones that fit your vehicle.

Go ahead and thread them all the way and you can just do this by hand, because they'll bottom out in there. If you try to get them much tighter than that, you could risk damaging something underneath. Once those are in, install the center bolt, tighten that down until it bottoms out on the center bolt of the steering wheel. I'm going to try to keep this straight using a 19 millimeter socket and ratchet and holding the wheel straight, tighten down the center bolt. Once it comes free, the wheels should come off pretty easily. Carefully remove the steering wheel. Slide the wire for the airbag clock spring through it.

Remove the snap ring on the clock spring with a pair of snap ring pliers. Simply put the tips of the pliers into the openings on the snap ring. Spread the snap ring and lift it up out of its grooves. Slide the snap ring off. If you have a tilt steering column, make sure that it is tilted all the way up. Grab the lever firmly. Pull that out. Remove the two T25 Torx on the bottom of your steering column cover. Pull down to separate your column, and then push in and pull out to release these hooks in the back.

Now there are two of these inverted T5 Torx that you need, an E5 inverted Torx socket to remove. However, if you have a 6.4 millimeter that's on there pretty snug and as long as you go careful, you should be able to spin them right out. Reinstall the lever for your tilt column if equipped. Push down and remove the lever again, so you don't bump it. It's hard to show and we'll show you when the piece is removed, but there's a small hole in the top of the ignition cylinder that you can get with a hooked pick.

I'm looking through the hole for the hazard switch to see this. What you need to do is push down on that. You want to hold your key like you're trying to start it and then push down on that little hole. You'll feel it released. Slide it out as far as it will go and turn it back some. Remove it fully so you can remove your steering column upper cover.

Now just to give you a better idea of what we were doing with that cover on top and yours will be right here blocking your view but you can look through, reach in to this whole. Key to the start position, push down, pull out, remove your pick, rotate backwards, remove your cylinder.

Slide the clock spring off the steering shaft. Pull the orange safety tab under the dash and release the connector for the clock spring. Now we're going to be replacing ours, so what we were going to do is just cut this connector off the end and then we'll pull the harness out of the loom. Rather than go into that whole loom again, we'll just route it down the side and put a couple of zip ties on there to keep it in place to reinstall a new one.

Here we have our old airbag clock spring that we removed from our vehicle and our new part from 1AAuto.com. As you can see with the exception of some minor aesthetic differences, these parts are exactly the same. We have the same connectors for the airbag side, the same lock tabs and the same opening for our steering column. We also have the same connector. However, we cut our old one off since this goes inside of a large harness and to save time and make this job easier, you can just trim that off and then route this wire down the side of the harness to make things a lot easier and faster. If your airbag clock spring is causing issues with your horn or your SIR system in your vehicle, in this new part from 1A Auto is going to go in direct fit just like your original equipment and fix you up right.

What we're doing is looping a couple of zip ties around our old wiring harness, and you'll notice I'm not tightening them fully because I want to position them, and it's easiest to get them installed up here. We'll just take a couple, slide them down. Line up your new clock spring. Leave the lock tab in place for now and route your wiring back through the zip ties we've put in place. When you finish routing your wire, reconnect the electrical connector under your dash. Slide the red safety tab back into place. Then you can tighten up all of the zip ties. You can trim the ends and make them look a little bit nicer if you want to.

Spread open your snap ring. Slide it back over the shaft of the steering column. There's two small flat blade screwdriver while pushing down on the clock spring, to slide the snap ring into its groove and wait for it to compress.

Reinstall the upper half of your steering column cover. Be sure to line up this little rubber boot for your gear selector lever. Just line up the channels and slide it in there. This is the detent that we had to hit on the ignition cylinder. Slide that back in. Make sure your key isn't all the way before you start doing this. Slide it all the way in, turn it forward and back to make sure it engages.

Reinstall your tilt lever. Place one hand firmly on top of the steering column. Release the lever and slowly allow it to go up. One thing you don't want to do, and I'm just going to do this for demonstration purposes, is just release the lever because that thing really moves. If this isn't aligned, well your shift is not in the right place, you've left a tool in there or even worse if your fingers were in here for some reason, that's going to do some damage. Make sure you let it go up slowly so you can reinstall your lower cover.

Reinstall your two E5 inverted Torx screws into the upper steering column cover. Remove the tilt latch rod again and now these hooks need to slide in and under and then pull forward to engage. Line up the lower boot for your gear selector after you've set the hooks in the back of your column cover. Snap everything back into place. Once it's lined up, reinstall your to two T25 Torx screws on the bottom of the column.

Reinstall your tilt lever. Carefully reinstall the harness for your clock spring and then pull the alignment pin out of your new part.

Reinstall your wheel onto the splines. Now one of the cool things about these wheels is they have a keyed spline so you can see I can't get it on and then it lines up and falls right in. Install the 21-millimeter nut as tight as you can toward the steering wheel nut to 29-foot pounds.

Make sure to attach the harness back into its clips as well as the one on the airbag, but we'll reconnect our connector and install our safety tab first. Slide the bag into place and just push it in firmly to engage all four clips. Now the most important step anytime you work on your airbags or anything that has to do with the airbag system, just put your key in, turn it to the run position, then reconnect your negative battery terminal. Remember to tighten this down with a 5/16s wrench. Now the reason we do this in the order that we did is power just came back on in the vehicle and our key is already on.

If anything bad had happened with the airbag like it shaved wire or some other issue, the bag would have deployed now while we're out here safely under the hood, rather than once we get the vehicle and turn the key and we're sitting right in front of it. While airbags are meant as a safety device in improper conditions, they can be very dangerous.

Thanks for watching. Visit us at 1AAuto.com for quality auto parts, fast and free shipping, and the best customer service in the industry.

How to Replace Airbag Clock Spring 1988-98 GMC Sierra K1500

step 1 :Disconnecting the Battery

step 2 :Removing the Air Bag

step 3 :Removing the Steering Wheel

step 4 :Removing the Steering Column Cover

step 5 :Removing the Clock Spring

step 6 :Installing the Clock Spring

step 7 :Installing the Steering Column Cover

step 8 :Reinstalling the Steering Wheel

step 9 :Reinstalling the Air Bag

Tools needed

How to Remove Clock Spring 2007-11 Mini Cooper S

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Instructional Video Library

How to Replace Airbag Clock Spring 1988-98 GMC Sierra K1500

step 1 :Disconnecting the Battery 0:50

step 2 :Removing the Air Bag 1:23

step 3 :Removing the Steering Wheel 2:23

step 4 :Removing the Steering Column Cover 4:07

step 5 :Removing the Clock Spring 6:53

step 6 :Installing the Clock Spring 8:33

step 7 :Installing the Steering Column Cover 9:50

step 8 :Reinstalling the Steering Wheel 12:19

step 9 :Reinstalling the Air Bag 13:10

Tools needed

How to Remove Clock Spring 2007-11 Mini Cooper S

Same Day Shipping

Guaranteed To Fit

USA Customer Support

Instructional Video Library

step 1 :Disconnecting the Battery

step 2 :Removing the Air Bag

step 3 :Removing the Steering Wheel

step 4 :Removing the Steering Column Cover

step 5 :Removing the Clock Spring

step 6 :Installing the Clock Spring

step 7 :Installing the Steering Column Cover

step 8 :Reinstalling the Steering Wheel

step 9 :Reinstalling the Air Bag