Air bag Light on

It could be just about anything in the system. Bad air bag connection, bad clock spring in the upper column, failed impact sensor, bad power feed to the control module. Seat belt latch or tension-er that is bad.

The light being on means there will be codes stored in the SRS module. But the free scanners most of the parts stores do will not read those codes, you need one that can read the SRS codes. That will at least give you a starting point. Parts swapping in the SRS system can get very expensive and if not done exactly right can set off the bags. That gets much more expensive as you could be right next to the bag when it does off.

When the light is on the system is disabled but you do not know what is disabling it. The airbag is essentially a bag with corn starch on it and an explosive charge that is set off to open the bag. This is the reason why one of the first items to be disconnected if you have to work around them are the air bags. If you are setting in the seat and strapped in, the bag going off will scare the crap out of you and can cause loss of control because you cannot see the road and the dust will cause you to start coughing like crazy. But even setting in the seat the bag can feel like you just got hit by a flying tackle. Now say you start swapping parts and you are setting with your head about three inches away from the bag when it decides to deploy. I have seen it happen at accident scenes. The end result was a coffin and a firefighters funeral.

Unless you know what you are doing airbags are not something to try learning repair skills on.

As I said the light is on which means the actual system should be off. You would be safer if you disconnected the battery, waited about twenty minutes and then removed the SRS fuses from the fuse panel at the end of the dash. You can then reconnect the battery as the system will not have power at all. Then take it in to get it scanned, tell them you pulled the fuses to make it safer, let them put them back in for testing.