Real cheap fix on a cars reversing sensors.

[collectors]

Quite a while back i was chatting with my local publican & he was complaining about a fix on his car. Parking sensors on a 3-year-old BMW. It cost him nearly £500 to get repaired."ouch"
This made me think that i must have a look at my ones & see why they don't work, only to discover the unit was kaput. Now, this is on an old x type jag. So, i had a look around to see what's for sale & found a kit on eBay. So, I ordered this cheapy Chinese/ebay version & found the sensors are smaller than the jags ones, do I drill new holes in the bumper? No, with the new kit came a small tank cutter & when you look at the jags sensors holes in the bumper, they have a centre area & an outer ring, blow me, the tank cutter was just the size of the centre part. So, I disconnected the old sensors & drilled through the middle & it was perfect & left a sort of frame for the new sensor. Just had to drill a small hole for the new sensor plug.
I then got the all sensor cables up into the boot & decided to put the new unit on the left-hand wing where there is a void to keep it out the tyre well. Now to wire up & test. I plugged in all the cables & was left with a red & black to connect. The black went to one of the many earth bolts in this area & the red went to the “Green & Black” on the wiring loom that goes to the reverse lamp.
Now just a quick test before I do the cabin display unit. Switched on the ignition & selected reverse & walked around the back to find it was all singing & dancing, OK Bleeping.
Next, I have to get the front display wired to the boot. I thought maybe under the carpet, but no, I remembered seeing a picture with one of these mounted-on tops of the rear-view mirror. So, out with the large flush curtesy light cluster & over the headlining. Now, this was a bit of a pain as the unit’s cable has a sealed plug on it & made some parts tight to get through, but we got there in the end.
Now for a full test & if it’s no good I will damage the jag & my garage door.
I reversed back until the unit was continuously bleeping showing 0 on the distance display & then went to have a look. The bumper was 4” away & my tow ball that I forgot about was 1/2” away, “phew”.
So all I had to do was mount the unit in the boot with some double-sided tape & mastic the sensors in the bumper & watch out for an arrow to mount the sensors in a certain direction.
All of this for, £8.50 in total & about an hour & a halfs work was far better than genuine parts alternative at around £190 plus labour. It could all be done in half the time if you wanted to mount the display/bleeper under or on top of the rear parcel shelf & would work just as well, & could be done in half the time.
Well, this was off topic.

[RAF96]

Still off topic then...
What was wrong with the original system. Could you not just have swapped out a duff sensor if that was the problem, although you say it was the unit (control unit).

My Qashqai had a built in fault finder in that when you selected reverse it would beep once short to indicate it was working. If there was a fault it would beep once long then beep again if sensor 1 was duff, twice for sensor 2 and so on until if you got 5 beeps it was the control unit was duff.

The plugs were industry standard so any replacement part would likely work with any other part I would have thought apart from exact calibration of distance.

Rob

[collectors]

With the fafing around with fault finding on an old car like this, far quicker & cheaper to just change it. Apparently is a common fault with x-types. Also common to get water in the boots wheel well & that's where the unit is fitted. So a good opportunity to move it. "Not that my boot gets damp." Yet.

[teedoubleudee]

I have an 11 year old X-Type and subscribed to the Jaguar user forum, not that I do any maintenance myself these days except the basic stuff. But it can be useful finding info out before taking to the dealers who may try and fleece you . There is lots of info regarding these sensors and how to fault find them.

https://www.jaguarforum.com/

[collectors]

For £8.50 from eBay. Got to be the cheapest way, i cant buy any single part of the jags reversing unit for this price & just an hour & a half to fit. As i said, if i put the bleeper under the back parcel shelf, could of done it in easily 1/2 the time.

[bulleidboy]

Having two Volvo's in the family - and like TWD, not doing maintenance myself anymore, I find that a quick peruse of the Volvo forum can more often than not answer the problem. We recently had to replace the airbag sensor on the V40 - the part cost £295.00 from the dealership, but the forum gave me a link to an independent supplier - I got the genuine part for £35.00 (secondhand), and now using an independant Volvo garage, they tested the part and fitted it for another £35.00 - and everything is now working perfectly. So the point is, it is worth looking on forums or even Youtube before handing your car over to the main dealer.