My reversing sensors have packed up for the 4th time now!

I have got a 2nd hand spare sensor from ebay (bought one about 6 months ago waiting for the inevitable!). Usual process for me is to swap them out one at a time and eventually I get there. However this failure "sounds" different and seems to be behaving differently. The fault is very intermittent and the continuous tone to indicate a failure is slightly higher than the normal tone you would hear from a sensor detecting something near. In the past for me anyway, a failure is indicated by a continuous tone that sounds the same as a sensor detecting something.

Any ideas or is it probably going to be the usual sensor failure?

Thanks.

That tone often means sensor failure. It is made when the parking sensor control module detects that signals are so out of whack they can't be true, or no signal at all, I believe. I had it and it was fixed by new sensor. Sometimes going into reverse it would go straight into the beep beep beep and then shortly after switch to the high pitched tone. You'll only hear the high tone once and then the whole system is disabled until you next turn the keys off and then on again. A bit unfortunate as I think some people hear the tone, don't think much of it and then proceed to reverse into something!

A diagnostic cable will save you unplugging them one by one as you can see in VCDS which one is failing very easily.

My reversing sensors have packed up for the 4th time now!

I have got a 2nd hand spare sensor from ebay (bought one about 6 months ago waiting for the inevitable!). Usual process for me is to swap them out one at a time and eventually I get there. However this failure "sounds" different and seems to be behaving differently. The fault is very intermittent and the continuous tone to indicate a failure is slightly higher than the normal tone you would hear from a sensor detecting something near. In the past for me anyway, a failure is indicated by a continuous tone that sounds the same as a sensor detecting something.

Any ideas or is it probably going to be the usual sensor failure?

Thanks.

the latest failure I've had gave a different tone and symptom to what I've experienced previously, so suspected the control unit - but a quick scan identified a sensor and once replaced it all works fine.

cheers

I have VCDS and the Gendon cable. Can you please tell me how I check for faulty sensors.

Thanks

Edited 9 May, 201214 yr by johannapam1

I have VCDS and the Gendon cable. Can you please tell me how I check for faulty sensors.

Thanks

I only have VCDS lite; but on mine I go to "Select Control Module", then choose the "Electronics 1" tab, then the parking controller is "76 - Park Assist".

If one of the sensors is faulty enough you might see a fault code logged if you open the controller fault codes (if you've had the high-pitched beep it is very likely a fault is logged). The sensor faults specify which exact sensor has a fault. If not, you can park a distance away from a wall and have a look in the "Measuring Blocks" - I can't remember off the top of my head which group it is, I just scrolled through them until you will find one that lists the distance readings for each of the 4 sensors. In my case I could see that one of the sensors was reading seemingly random values. I swapped that sensor's position with one of the other sensors which was working fine, and could see that the fault moved with the sensor (ie it wasn't a cabling or controller fault).

Thanks Jimbof - very useful

Regards

John