Airbag Steering Wheel Swap

[Doofus]

Can I replace an airbag steering wheel with one from a different car? Different year, different size airbag.

[Doofus]

ETA I know about bosses and so on; this question is about whether the airbag will still function, assuming I'd need to change some connectors or something.

[E-bmw]

If it fits & you can change the plug/socket then it will fire as it should.

2 big ifs there though.

[Doofus]

I'm aware of the ifs, but wondered if there might be a chip or some recoding or something. Ultimately, it's just an explosive device with a detonator, but it sort of feels that it ought to be more complicated than that...

[TwinKam]

Doofus said:

I'm aware of the ifs, but wondered if there might be a chip or some recoding or something. Ultimately, it's just an explosive device with a detonator, but it sort of feels that it ought to be more complicated than that...

You've got it, it's just a bomb that needs a voltage to set it off, the plugs I've seen have all been the same (no idea why, there is usually precious little common sense or commonality in such things, but heh...) so if it physically fits you're half way there.
The final say-so will be the ECU checking that it can 'see' an airbag at the end of the line, that's down to the internal resistance of the airbag. Given that the devices we use to simulate an airbag during testing are nothing more than a neatly packaged resistor, I'd imagine that those resistances are all pretty similar too.

[Doofus]

Lovely, thank you.