parking sensors

BrianG

Guest
Hi folks,
Been having problems this month with my concentration and on two occassions I reversed into objects.
Having looked on ebay it seems you can get reversing sensor kits for anything between £15 to £150. Do any of you have experience of fitting any kits.
Any advice would be gratefully received.
Cheers Brian
 
the fitting of sensors is quite easy, the main problems are

worst being routing the wiring through the van

and making the power connection, if your van can detect wiring faults (ie canbus) it may show up, which can be avoided by powering from your leisure battery through a relay connected to the power feed to the reversing cable.

al
 
Very simple to fit. The kit normally includes the right size drill. Once you have the sensors located you then connect them up to a control box which has +12v GND 4x sensor inputs and buzzer output. You connect the 12v from your reversing light and you are in business.
As previously mentioned the wire routing can get a little tricky and you may need to mask the sensors if you have a towbar fitted as it will give a false positive.
 
Reversing sensors

Thanks for info so far. I'll check the kit from amazon. I appreciate that the most difficult job is getting the cabling from main box to the facia. I might consider sleeving the whole cable and run it undre the floor of the vehicle depending on the size of plugs etc.
Cheers Brian
 
As said the biggest problem is trying to get the wiring from the sensors to the dashboard. I fitted a cheap set I bought off Amazon (I think they were less than £15) as well as the beeper they had a small panel with LED's which showed as you were getting closer.
 
You could go the whole hog and fit a reversing camera! They are even wireless these days, mine is VERY useful when backing up to couple up the tow bar, like others have said it took a couple of hours to run the cable from the monitor on the dash to the rear locker, next time I'll try a wireless one!
 
I got a £20 4 sensor kit from Maplin, easy enough to fit into the rear valance (included the hole saw). As mentioned, running the wires is the hard part, especially as my kit had an LED readout to fit to the dash - this needed a bit of creative wire extension. Liked it so much I fitted another set to the front. This is more difficult as the front bumper has more structure in it. I wired it up through a microswitch attached to the gear lever quadrant to switch on in 1st gear. When you're setting the sensors up it's worth sticking them on with blutac to test the coverage before you drill...
 
I tried wireless sensors. Waste of space! The signal was too inconsistent to reliably reach the unit on the dash from the rear of the van. We have a 6m van by the way. They either cried wolf or didn't work at all. I have since fitted a camera with flipdown screen and it is brilliant.
 
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