Parking Sensor Corrosion

[goodgem]

The parking sensors on my 56 plate 2.5 Titanium packed up around a year ago, the symptoms being a continuous tone for 3 seconds when selecting reverse accompanied with rapidly flashing warning lamp/s in the dash switches.

I asked the dealer to look into this at the 62.5k service and the answer came back that the sensors were corroded. I was astonished at this as the car was less than 3 years old. The dealer quoted around £450 to presumably replace the entire parking sensor system. Of course, it was out of warranty so nothing doing as far as a free repair/replacement goes so needless to say I declined the dealers offer to relieve me of 450 of my hard earned pounds.

The sensors themselves were plastic coated when I first bought the car but the coating soon broke off so perhaps this had something to do with allowing water and dirt to get to the sensors. In any event I suspect these components are of a very poor standard to break down that early. Oddly enough my S-Max is in for its 75k service and I have courtesy 59 plate Fiesta with only 6000 miles on it, and one of the rear parking sensors is also showing signs of corrosion; so not an S-Max problem exclusively it seems.

Anyway, does anyone know where to get hold of replacement sensors, apart from Ford's who only seem to sell the entire sytem?

Any help greatly appreciated.

[mintalkin]

ford fit x-vision systems,so why they do not just replace the dodgy sensor? i would look for the control box in the luggage compartment which is usually fitted behind one of the side panels,you could follow the wire from the sensor back to find it,confirm the make and model number from the control box and do an internet search for x-vision parking sensors, lots of places deal with x vision so you should be able to get just the sensor.then its just a case of unpluging the old sensor and pluging in the new one.

[goodgem]

ford fit x-vision systems,so why they do not just replace the dodgy sensor? i would look for the control box in the luggage compartment which is usually fitted behind one of the side panels,you could follow the wire from the sensor back to find it,confirm the make and model number from the control box and do an internet search for x-vision parking sensors, lots of places deal with x vision so you should be able to get just the sensor.then its just a case of unpluging the old sensor and pluging in the new one.

Thanks, I'll give that a try. I've always thought it should be a lot easier and far less expensive than the dealer advised. At the time I recall it all seemed to much trouble for them to do a proper diagnosis and so opted to give me the easier, total replacement solution. Makes you wonder if I had said yes to the £450 price tag, what I would have actually got for my money!

Cheers.