B1331: Passenger Front Impact Sensor Short

Circuit fault

What B1331 means

Front impact sensors mount ahead of the passenger front wheel area, on the radiator support or inner fender, where they can feel a frontal hit early. Their wiring runs forward through the engine bay. A short to ground means a conductor in that run is touching chassis metal, so the signal the SRSCM needs never arrives intact.

The front of the vehicle is a hard place for wiring. Heat, road spray, salt, and vibration all work on the harness, and any front end repair puts a wrench near it. A short to ground is usually mechanical damage rather than an electronic failure, which means the repair is often a section of harness rather than a sensor.

Common causes

• Harness insulation rubbed through against the radiator support or inner fender
• A wire pinched during bumper, headlight, or radiator work
• Corrosion inside the sensor connector from road spray and salt
• Rodent damage to the front harness
• A shorted sensor pulling the circuit to ground internally

Crash data or hardware fault?

B1331 is a live circuit reading. The SRSCM measures that line constantly and drops the code once the short is gone. Crash data is the opposite: written when airbags deploy, locked into module memory, and not removable by clearing codes with a tool.

Does our reset clear it?

Clearing this code does nothing about a wire touching ground. The SRSCM measures the circuit again immediately and stores B1331 right back. Repair the harness or replace the sensor first. Our mail-in reset is for Kia SRSCMs that are locked with deployment data, and that service comes after the wiring work is finished.

Which makes throw it

Kia uses B1331 for the passenger front impact sensor harness. The B13 block on these vehicles covers front sensor and firing circuits, so a code in that range keeps you in the front half of the car.

What to do next

Follow the harness from the passenger front impact sensor back along the radiator support and look for a rub through, since that is what most shorts to ground turn out to be. Unplug the sensor and see if the short stays, because a circuit still shorted with the sensor out of the picture puts the fault in the harness. We stock genuine OEM Kia impact sensors when the sensor is what failed. Related codes: B1102, B1334, B1054, B1658.