PDC Advice
 

My pdc has never worked. It sounds like its a pretty cool feature and I would like to get my pdc system up and running. I have no scanner tools (inpa,ect. ) except for an obd reader which will do me no good in this case.

When I engage the car in reverse, the dong comes on emitting a solid tone and the pdc light flases. From my understanding this is telling me I have a fault in the system.

So far all I have been able to do is physically check/listen to the eight sensors. All four front sensors emitt the "clicking noise" and only one of the rear sensors emitt the noise. I suspect my fault lies somewhere around these three sensors. I have physically checked the connectors on theses three sensors and nothing changed. The connection being closest to the sensors.

My questions:
Is there another location that I can check at the rear for proper connection besides the connection right at the sensor?
If you were in my shoes would you just throw three pdc sensors at it? I don't want to do this as these are a little pricey.
Is there a way to test ohms or voltage at the connector/sensors?

since you have one "clicking" sensor at the back, use that one to plug into the other three wires and see if that one will be clicking... if it is clicking, than the wiring is good, and you need 3 new sensors... if that one is not clicking in new spots, than the signal is going to the sensors... you can test the three "dead" ones in the good location, to see if they are really dead or not...

in the second case, you will need to troubleshoot the wires...

but first, lets see if the good sensor will work in the other spots...

With BMW Scan or INPA you can make your system 4 sensor and disable the front if you want to take ones from the front and put them in back.

Yea I was thinking this was possible. I was thinking you could splice the connections and run two in the front and two in the back. I would never attempt this, my mind just has a tendency to wonder off sometimes.....

Waiting for the wife to return from shopping and I will go try some sensor swapping.

Try removing and cleaning each sensor that isn't clicking, use electrical parts cleaner. They can get extremely dirty which will cause them to stop working. This fixed my PDC.

Thanks. I will defiantly try this. I was under the impression these were solid state, but with the clicking sound I guess they couldn't be. It also makes sense that the rear ones would be dirty.

I went around the car with the key on, engine not running. I put my ear next to each sensor. If it clicked I left it alone, if it didn't I pulled it, cleaned it and reinstalled before listening to it again. I had 2 that weren't clicking, one on the front passenger side, one on the rear passenger side. After everything functioned properly. It doesn't hurt to try, if it doesn't work you're only out a 5 dollar can of electrical parts cleaner and an hour or so of your time.

So I pulled all four rear pdc sensors out and was able to test them. Turns out I had two faulty connections and I have one bad sensor. I was not able clean it out because I ended up destroying it before I could:). I'm kind of glad I destroyed it because that confirms a bad sensor.

Thanks guys.