Did I Get The Shaft???

Okay, so I bought a 95 Lumina LS about 5 months ago for $3200, which wasn't that bad since it had pretty low miles on it and was in good shape.

The other day, I am looking at the steering wheel and I see a little tear right where the leather folds to let the airbag out. It's about 2 inches long, but somehow I never noticed it before. Anyways, it's torn a little more lately and now I can peel it back and see what I believe is where the airbag should be. I can see a yellow piece of plastic that has a few holes in it in a cross pattern. Is that what inflates the bag?

Did I get sold a car without bags that I could have died in?

Do I have anyway to sue the guys that sold me the car, or has it been too long?

I looked over the paperwork and there is nothing mentioning the problem, and I know the guys didn't say anything about it. Is it legal to sell a car without bags in Idaho? I know it is in Washington.

By the way, I'm not exactly too trusting of these guys. They sold me the car with a totally empty tank (below 2nd red bar), and screwed me on my trade-in by about $400.

Any help greatly appreciated.


---UPDATED---
Got some pics this morning from my phone. No pics available for the passenger's side. Please excuse the crap quality.
http://www.geocities.com/KonaKenny7/lumina1.jpghttp://www.geocities.com/KonaKenny7/lumina2.jpg

If it's from a used car dealer then there is a good chance that they knew and didn't tell you... however try posting this in the Lumina forum, maybe somebody knows more about how the inside of the steering wheel should look. Have you tried taking it into a dealer or asking them about it?

if you knew how airbags worked you would know that you are looking at the case that holds the air bag or the airbag itsself. airbags are inflated by a chemcial reaction producing massive ammounts of nitrogen (if i remember correctly or an oxide of nitrogen). the bag is porus to keep it from explodeing and so it actually absorbes hte impact and not just make you hit a really hard over inflated sack.

they are actually really fun to play with, after seeing what they did on dirty jobs i had a frind of mine salvage one from a '97 saturn that had the rear totaled but the impact didnt make the airbags deploy... we put an empty platic barel over it, got 25ft of speaker wire, touched one lead to the (+) of a car battery and counted down, taped the (-) and kaplowey... shot it about 20ft in the air.

ok so that last bit was useless.

to find out...get in a wreck (sarcasum)...or take it to a mehcanic.

Ones I've seen that have gone off were torn all to heck. No way to put it back in and make it look right. The tear might be from normal wear and tear, sunlight and such. How does the passenger side look? Might sign up for a carfax check on it.

Maybe you can check a search on Idaho Courts for a related case.

Maybe you can check a search on Idaho Courts for a related case.

Good point there. Here in Ohio we can search the DMV database for any title number or VIN and get some of the crash or salvage information for free. Be worth some searching in your area.