How To: Fit aftermarket Reverse Sensors

Here is my tutorial on installing a set of rear aftermarket parking sensors. You’ll want to start off by following my tutorial below to remove the black interior boot trim before you do anything else. Once this has been done then you can start with the installation and routing of the wires for the parking sensor.

This is my first MAJOR tutorial so please let me know if I have missed anything or if you want more help or photos. Also big thanks to everyone on here for pointing me in the right direction with this one and also thanks to @tucpal and @rusty2009 in particular

Pre-Requisites:

You will need to extend the length of the RED/LIVE cable which comes with the kit as it won’t be long enough to feed it up the boot trim and to the reverse light wire which you’ll be splicing into. The black wire can be left as it is out of the box as it will only be traveling a few CMs to your earth point.

You’ll have already removed the black boot trim which you need to do to route the wire to the reverse light live feed. See my tutorial here:

http://www.vxoc.org.uk/forum/Thread-How-To-Boot-Door-Panel

Buy some parking sensors! Ha. These are the ones I have but i have them WITHOUT the screen, just the speaker:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/120855522291?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

Steps:

1. Begin by removing the rubber boot from where it’s clipped onto the boot lid and the boot frame as you’ll need to do this in order to pull the wire through it. The rubber boot is this one:

It’s only attached to the car on both sides by 4 clips around the base of both sides of the boot, it comes off easily with a trim removal tool and a bit of prising .

2. Now you will want to route the connector end of the parking sensors power cable through the metal frame of the bumper lid, a hole which you can thread the wire through is circles below:

You can see my wire already poking out of this hole.

Keep pushing it down until it pokes out of the hole which is now visible in the boot lid where the top side of the rubber boot was attached to the car.

3. Now comes the tricky part, you’ll want to feed the cable through the top end of the rubber boot and out of the bottom side of the rubber boot so it looks like this:

You can get tools for threading wires through tight spaces like this but I simply squeezed the boot together from both sides like an accordion which then made the distance I had to thread the wire less than if it was left extended like it is naturally. You’ll just want to be patient here and keep pushing it and try it pull from the other side of the boot.

4. Next you’ll need to feed the wire through the hole in the frame where the bottom of the boot was connected and just keep pushing it down as much as you can. Once you have fed a good amount of the wire into this hole then you’ll need to put your arm into the left hand side cubby hole (where the fuse box goes) and reach up and try to grab the end of the wire and pull it through to where you’d like to have the connecter box for the parking sensors. Like so:

You can even see where I attached the connector box in this above photo too.

5. Next you’ll want to re-attach the boot trim but you’ll need to ensure you feed the other end of the cable through the hole where you access the reverse lights as you’ll be splicing this into the reverse light cable next. Image can be found below to show what I mean:

6. Remove the foam from around these wires which will allow you to find the GREEN/LIVE reverse wire:

The below photos was taken inside the hole where the reverse lights wiring is accessed. It’s covered by a small piece of plastic in the boot lid which is easily removed

7. Proceed to splice the red/live wire that you’ve just been routing through the trim into the GREEN/LIVE wire which is the one for the reverse light:

It should then look something like this:

8. Next you’ll need to splice/connect a ground circle loop connector to the black end of the wire which is currently residing in the cubby hold and is the one which is part of the power connector cable that you routed through the trim:

Then you’ll need to route the ground wire (black one from the power cable) to the bolt which is also in the cubby hole:

You may already have another wire on here if you have a fuse box back there (I don’t) but it can be fastened on all the same .

Now the wiring for the power and ground is done! I then plugged each of the sensors (and the power connector) into the parking sensor console and then stuck the car into reverse and had someone wave there hand over each of the sensors one by one to test they were working. Better to find out now that ones broke than later!

9. Now that’s all done you will need to follow this tutorial to remove the bumper of the car:

http://www.vxoc.org.uk/forum/Thread-How-To-Remove-Rear-bumper

10. Once that off you will need to locate the circles on the inside of the bumper which you’ll be using as guides for your drilling of the holes. Now there are 6 circles in total but you just want the ones I have circled below and not the ones I have CROSSED:

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I know the photo is poor and those marks aren’t EXACTLY where I have circled and crossed them but basically there are 4 (circled) which are roughly in a straight line, these are the ones you DO want to use. The there is one more on each side (crossed) which are below the others and there are the ones you DON’T want to use.

11. Once you’ve found the 4 pre-defined marks, you’ll want to mark a little dot in the middle of each of the 4 circles. You’ll then want to use a pretty small drill bit to drill through this hole from the INSIDE to the OUTSIDE. This will serve as your reference hole.

12. Now turn the bumper over and stick a small piece of masking tape over each of the 4 holes you’ve made like so:

Now place the centre of the big circle drill bit that came in your pack inside the small hole on the OUTSIDE of the bumper and proceed to drill through to the INSIDE of the bumper to create your 4 holes an then you’ll have something like this:

Now just remove the tape and you’ll have 4 perfect circles you may need to just remove some of the excess plastic that’s left around the edges but that’s it.

13. Now you’ll want to prepare the interior of the boot of the car ready for when you feed the wires through from the bumper. The bit i’m referring too is the bit which is on the front side of the boot when you open it, it’s the big black panel which forms part of the inside of the boot. I’ll try and get some photos of this later but it simply pulls away from the car itself and is only held in place with a few clips .

14. Locate the big rubber grommet which can be seen in the following photo, it’s where the bumper was on the metal frame of the car:

I cut a small hole in this grommet which i then used to feed all of the wires from the sensors into in the next step.

15. Next you’ll want to bring the bumper over to the car and feed each one of the sensors through holes you’ve made and then push the wires through the grommet hole as mentioned above. Once they are through, you can simply reach into where you removed that plastic trim inside the boot compartment and then pull them through.

You can now also work the bumper back onto the car while pulling those wires tight into the boot compartment, you don’t want them dangling loosely.

16. Now feed them up the left hand side of the furry black trim and then pull them into the cubby hole. You can then begin to plug each of the sensors into the control until. Don’t forget that the sensor on the left side of the bumper will need to go into the control unit marked “A” and then the next one along will go into the “B” hole etc.

17. You can now put the black interior boot trim back into place and jobs a good one! You will just want to experiment with where you have the speaker, I stuck my arm up inside the left hand side cubby hole where I fed the red live wire down and stuck it up inside there to the metal frame of the car.

Picture of where that would be from the inside is as follows:

If you could see through that white trim under the rear glass quarter then you'd see that's where I have the speaker. Seems to be pretty loud there as you can hear it echoing around the car :P

Finished Job: