Reversing sensor retro-fit

I fitted one to my Rover, cost about £15 and it looks and works works just fine. I've read that some people say they have had problems in the wet but I've never had any such issues. Took at most a couple of hours to fit, so I guess that's about what a garage would charge.

Andy C

It would depend - factory fit may be body coloured.

There's thousands of near-new Fiestas about. Find one that comes with the spec you want.

Most will be ex daily hire cars, so unlikely to have too many options ticked.

Yeah, that's what I've found.

I probably could find exactly what I'm looking for somewhere (i.e. Ford Direct) but the price would be up to £2k more than the supermarket prices. I reckon I could get a sensor kit fitted professionally for £200. The car supermarket spec is exactly what we want, apart from the reversing sensors.

Generic sensor kits are cheap and easy enough to fit, depending on accessibility. It's the looking the same as the factory one that might be more difficult - unless Ford do a kit for this.

I'm just about to do this on my wife's car, however I've gone for doing it myself and replacing the stereo and storage space below with a DVD player with inbuilt screen and then putting a camera on the tailgate.

The main difficulties I forsee are finding the handbrake and reversing light switches to connect them in.

I've had a car with a reversing camera and found it far better than sensors. I could position my towball millimetres from the car behind in a supermarket car-park. Better still, I could see my trailer for reversing - normally it's too low and narrow and only becomes visible once it is way off line.

SteveW

I'll second that.

I've had 2 cars with cameras, but currently only have sensors.

BMW sensors go red on the screen and beep like hell when you're still a foot or so away from a wall.

I found out that the Skoda hire car I had recently had sensors which went red just at the point you'd touch something.

Nedavno SteveW napisa:

What is the handbrake switch for?

And why connect to the reverse light switch? I've only ever had to link to the reversing light supply wire.

Tim

As it is also a DVD player and visible to the driver, it legally must only play DVDs when the vehicle is stationary. I wouldn't be suprised if this became part of the MOT at some point, so it's worth connecting it rather than just grounding it.

The camera will connect to the reversing light wire at the rear of the car, but the DVD player also needs a signal to tell it to switch to the camera feed. It will probably be easier to run a wire from the reversing light switch than to try and access the loom to split out that wire or to run an extra wire from the rear of the car.

SteveW