Watch out for this one folks

For the folks in any snow and salt prone areas, might be worth an inspection on condition of your front zone crash sensor.

What I had: blinking air bag light.

Used my TopDon TopScan and found code P1035.
It's a communication fault of the front crash zone sensor.

The sensor is located on a support bracket between the radiator and the front bumber grille. It is protected / shielded. I didn't even know anything was located there, until I received the code and had to investigate this.

Here is what I found left of the sensor LOL. It looks actually worse, than in these photos.

Corroded.




small area where I suspect the failure occurred (brown stained portion).


The metal/zinc eroded quite a bit down, as I decided to scrape it down to see how far the damage went.


The part is no longer manufactured, which is a huge issue.
Without this sensor, you SRS system is in fault, and will not deploy air bags.

So I dropped into local car recycler (had two R51s) and I found one good one.

As for inspection, I cleaned the backside of the my old sensor (the circuit encapsulated in protective silicone).

Compared mine to similar crash zone circuit from Altima, QX56, and Armada at the recycler, and the circuit board is the same. But the bolt pattern to mount is different.

See a spare QX56 board (cleaned) beside the removed one. The circuits are the same, year to year.
(I'm not saying that I plugged in that one to see if it would work) .


Please find a helpful video below,
This fella is a consumer advocate, and he describes that this part was actually on recall some years ago, but Nissan turned the customer away.

I have an '05. It is the exact same location, and the repair is basic. I unplugged my battery doing my replacement, and reset the SRS codes with a scan tool.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RS1zPRqxkDU

Hope this is helpful for some.

Good info. To my knowledge those sensors are the same on practically everything Nissan. The only rub with using one from a different model is the mounting. They each contain an accelerometer, so it's essential to mount the unit in the same board orientation as your original for it to work correctly.

You may not have them on your '05, but the CZ sensors aren't the only ones mounted up there which sometimes corrode or break and cause problems. The ambient temp sensor (for the dash and HVAC) also mounts there, and if you have the rearview mirror with the temperature display, the sensor for that also mounts there. Any of them can succumb to road debris and not just corrosion.