reverse parking sensors...

[bella]

ok, bit of a long shot here, but when an rac man was trying to break into my car for me he managed to trip out the rear parking sensors when he triggered the ignition. obviously i only discovered this a couple of days after when i nearly backed into someone in a car park...

is this likely to be related to the fuses, ie is it something i can sort out myself? or should i just get a spanner to have an engineering stare at it for a few hours? the car is a bmw 3 series 2002 model.

[Adam43]

Fuses are the first thing to check, because it might be them and it is simple to check. Find the manual which tells you which fuse does what. Has anything else gone? Often more than one thing is on one fuse.

Alternatively learn to park.

[bella]

it's just the sensors. which is extremely irritating. to kickstart the ignition, he had to use the reverse light wiring...

i can park. its the cars that can't in the car park and don't park within the lines i'm worried about

i just have to learn not to lock the keys in the car first...

[GORDON STREETER]

I fit a few of these parking sensors to customers cars, and it sounds like a feed wire off the unit. It picks up the feed from the reverse lamps. If the reverse lamps work look for a wire off or an inline fuse if its an aftermarket set.

[Bluebottle]

All my cars have reverse parking sensors- one on each front door and one in the top centre of the windscreen

Actually, I wish sometomes that we parking radar on the Previa simly because if there's a child or short person walking behind the car they can't be seen in the mirror, the blind spot there is huge, think I might fit a reversing beeper! (Although visibility is better than most vans I've driven!)

[bella]

yeah, that's one of the plus points in having sensors on mine - it's one of the daft hatchback ones, so like on your previa (but not to such a big extent) you can't see to trolley height, or bollard height, or yes, child height... the downside is that you get incredibly lazy - i just never bothered looking behind because anything imminent made the car go nuts.

which is why i'm eager to get it sorted, but would rather not lose the car for a day while they stand around and ponder. i'll have a look at the fuse box, which is conveniently in the glove box...

[jhansen]

Caution - lame American question:

Is this a Euro thing? I can't say that I've heard of anyone on this side of the pond talk about parking sensors. Maybe in the sense that they are included in some of the luxuary models. But not as an aftermarket add-on part.

[bella]

nope, here they're included if not as standard then an option on pretty much most cars. we have much smaller car parks, and a far smaller country, even if we dont have cars the size of an oil tanker to reverse into the space

it's not the fuse. using the handy guide (and the tweezers included in their own special compartment...!) i extracted the fuse for the rear parking "aid" (oi), and it's intact. oh goodie.

[strider]

This is clearly a serious problem. I think you should call out the RAC. Again.

[johnh875]

Can you follow the wires with a multimeter and see where voltage is getting to?