How to Install Reverse Parking Sensors

JHMEG

Have seen this topic come up a few times, so here's how I installed mine.

First of all, I spent ages trawling ebay and decided on a seller that was selling colour coded sensors. This makes a big difference to the appearance of the final result and is cheaper than buying a black set and getting them sprayed. This is his kit, with silver sensors. No visual aids, just a beeper. £28 delivered to Ireland. Note it also comes with a hole saw. This is nice as it makes cutting the back bumper very easy.



My car is a sort of navy blue. On his ebay ad he has a colour card which allowed me to pick the closest colour:



Now, this bit is important. There are two important points here:
Before you go cutting your bumper you need to get under the car and look to see what's behind it. Some cars have impact beams to lessen the damage caused by a rear hit, some don't. The US version of mine does, but the European version does not. If you are thinking of installing sensors you need to look before you drill.

The other thing is that some cars have predefined marks on the inside of the bumper which makes locating the sensors a lot easier. My car does not. Again, the only way you will know is to get under your car and look (with a torch).

So when I was sure that my car did not have predefined marks, or any obstructions behind the bumper the next step was to decide how to locate the sensors.

After much googling for ideas I decided to use my own: a piece of string pinned to the back bumper.


First step, pick a good location, high up on the bumper. A bit of string is pinned to the bumper:



Wider view:



Now to pick where to pin it to on the other side. I used a bit of what I learned in mechanical drawing in school to locate the other side. By measuring distances (using string) from the corner of the bumper and from the tail lights etc to the pin I was able to draw some arcs on the bumper on the other side using a black marker. Several arcs cut each other and where they met was where the pin was to go:



Wider view:




Next thing was to use the "fence post" method and calculate where the middle two sensors were to go. This involves measuring the distance with a measuring tape between the two pins. Then as there are 4 sensors all in, the total measurement is divided by 3. I measured that distance from both pins towards the other bin just to be sure marking with the black marker. When everything tallied, in went the middle two pins:



Next step, drill the bumper!



Drilled!



And now to insert a sensor:

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And now to drill the rest of the bumper:



And insert the rest of the sensors. Note, these just push in. They have rubber splines that will stop them from coming loose tho.



And that's the hard part done! I'm quite pleased with the results.

JHMEG

And now we move on to the wiring and location of the control unit. The control unit only required a positive and negative, so it is only active when reversing. The only other things in the car that are also active are the reversing lights, so the contro unit will get its power from them.

Here's a reversing light in the boot lid:



Now to remove it and find out what colour the wires are. Every single wire in the car is a unique colour so there is no chance of making a mistake once the colours are identified. I reckon it's green/silver and black/silver

Now, by pulling back the boot liner we find a couple of things:
a) The wiring loom from the boot lid coming from the boot. I didn't have enough hands to photograph this but the green/silver and black/silver were spliced into.
b) The thing that looks like a fan is a fan. It helps to ventilate the IMA battery can get very hot as it's put under huge loads at times.
c) Honda didn't paint the non-visible parts of this car to save weight. Reminds me of a particular French maker that also doesn't, but to save money



Ok, once the power for the control unit is wired up, it's time to get the sensor wiring up into the car.


What have we here, a bodywork grommet looking to be pulled out:



Grommet removed we can see daylight. Means no drilling though the bodywork is required, but from research it should never be required.

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<div id="post_message_432348">Now to get under the car and feed the wires from the sensors up behind the bumper and in to where the control until will be:




An X cut in the grommet the wires are fed through it:



Everything is wrapped up and cable-tied. The control unit has an adhesive backing on it so it gets stuck to the body work behind the bootliner:



The wiring for the piezo beeper is fed through the (again unpainted) bodywork. It too has an adhesive backing and I mounted it in the hole also seen in the photograph. This is just behind the rear seats where it is audiable in the cabin.

It's advisable to test out various locations before permanently affixing it. Mine is very loud and I ended up sticking blu-tack in it to dull it a bit.




Final notes. These sensors are not as wide-angle as the set on my previous car so while they do a good job they don't detect things beside the car quite as well.

I'm delighted with the end result. The positioning is very accurate and they look more stock than stock and you would not know that the paint colour is not a 100% match.

Captain Slow IRL

Very tidy job.
Not a lot of snow around your area?!:)

Owen

I do a lot of these, few observations though - when drilling with the included holesaw, put some masking tape over where you want to drill. It prevents swarf potentially damaging the paint in the area. Secondly, if you're painting them yourself, use only dust coats of paint and built it up very slowly and thinly. Too much paint will cause them to give false positives.

BOHtox

i'm sure they were for the missus not for yourself:cool:

JHMEG

PaintDoctor wrote: »

put some masking tape over where you want to drill.

The masking tape will also prevent the hole saw from spinning off acorss the bumper, but using pins in the bumper makes pilot holes which also prevents it.

Raiser

JHMEG wrote: »

Final notes. These sensors are not as wide-angle as the set on my previous car so while they do a good job they don't detect things beside the car quite as well.

I'm delighted with the end result. The positioning is very accurate and they look more stock than stock and you would not know that the paint colour is not a 100% match.

Thanks for that! A real quality post and will keep lots of us busy next Saturday week!!!

As a Honda fan I loved your defence of Honda's Paintshop integrity and good intentions!!!!

- Re. the wide-angle issue, could this be helped or negated by situating the two outermost sensors closer to or even actually on the curve of the bumper?

Also not sure if you left out the ebay link or sensor brand by accident or design? Could you please PM them on if you're happy with both!

eamon234

Good post OP I've seen some right hatchet jobs done lately - one in particular on a brand new Passat - alll offline in a completely different colour with wires still visible - matches his fake LED headlamp (with only some of the bulbs working) strip perfectly! Must try and get a sneaky pic he's at the school every morning!

Voodoomelon

Great post! We all love these installation threads, there should be more of them. A fine finish sir and you routed the cables well.

I have a heated seats installation write-up coming in a few days, stay tuned!

Absurdum

excellent thread, thanks

JHMEG

Raiser wrote: »

- Re. the wide-angle issue, could this be helped or negated by situating the two outermost sensors closer to or even actually on the curve of the bumper?

Absolutely, but at the potential risk of having no coverage at some part closer the middle.

JHMEG

Raiser wrote: »

Also not sure if you left out the ebay link or sensor brand by accident or design? Could you please PM them on if you're happy with both!

No, I did it during the summer so I've lost the link.

These look like the same kit, similar price, but probably a different seller:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=190322960277

bmm

Where are the photos gone from the ops instructions?

**Timbuk2**

bmm wrote: »

Where are the photos gone from the ops instructions?

The thread is a year and a half old, so the links seem to have gone inactive. And the OP was banned.

EPM

**Timbuk2** wrote: »

The thread is a year and a half old, so the links seem to have gone inactive. And the OP was banned.

Exactly.

Thread closed.