Hello!

I am new to this forum and like everyone else here, I am seeking advice.

My 17yo daughter has a 2006 Saturn Vue AWD that we bought her. In her very first snowstorm she went off the road and slide sideways into the snowbank. Upon impact the side curtain airbags deployed. There was no damage to the body panels at all. Being a nice running car and all wheel drive I figured I would repair it rather than buying her another.

I replaced the side curtain airbags with used ones from ebay. I replaced the seatbelt pretensioners from a local u-pull-it. I put everything back together along with a used headliner from the u=pull-it. I sent the srs module out to be cleared of crash data but they returned my money stating that there were communication issues with the module and they could not reset it. I then bought a used module off ebay, installed it and sent it to my local GM dealer to be flashed to the car. 

After 2 hours of trying the tech told me that there was a communication issue with this module and he suspected that I would need to buy a brand new module in order to restore the car to working order. So I now have a $260 bill and the option to buy a $750 module from the local dealer. 

I found the same part number from Gmpartsonline .com for $460 so I opted to buy it there. The tech asked that he be the one to install it so he could be sure it was installed correctly. Apparently I am not trustworthy enough to remove the seats and center console, remove the 3 bolts retaining the module and unplug it. Anyway, the module came and I delivered both the car and the brand new module to the dealer.

The appointment was for 0730 and we got a call around 1:30 stating that they cannot get the scan tool to communicate with the module. He said that if he had another 4 or 5 hours to trace wires that he could possibly get it programmed.

I was already into the dealer for another $650 and My daughters car still has the airbag light on. In fact now it has gone from a solid light to a flashing light. There does not appear to be any sequence, just flashing about once a second with no visible pause.

I own a Innova 5610 which is capable of reading srs codes but there are no codes present. As I do more research I realize that I did not replace the side impact sensor. Could this be the root of my issues?

Any thoughts? Have I missed something else somewhere that is causing this issue?