Old Dog Learned a New Trick

Well I saved myself some money today by finding a new method I hadn't seen before. The problem is that My Ram Backup Parking Sensors which are the beeping type without a visual screen (which I prefer by the way), was having a "Clean Parking Sensors" warning message the system was not being active. Even though they are clean it was malfunctioning.

The system consists of 4 sensors, a wiring harness, then the parking assist brain box in the kick panel. Without a fancy OBD2 scanner and just a basic one, I couldn't tell exactly what was wrong with the system. But then I saw a video of someone using a camera to see if the sensors were active by picking up the clicking on the cameras microphone. I figured this would be a great excuse to spend $7 at Harbor Freight so I bought the mechanics stethoscope.

I put the truck in reverse, not even started, and the system was on but not working. I went to each sensor and put the stethoscope on it and could hear the high frequency clicking of the sensor for the first 3, but the 4th wasn't making any noise. I took that sensor and swapped it with another to see if it was the sensor or that section of wiring, and the sensor was not working at new location either, so I narrowed it down to that one sensor being faulty. I should be able to order a $20 sensor to replace and fix the system.

I'm assuming this would work on any rear or front bumper mounted proximity sensors, so if you have a system failure, this is how you can check each sensor and save quite a bit of money I'm sure rather than a dealer trip to diagnose. And for what it's worth, I've never used a stethoscope before and good god, that thing can hurt your ears if you aren't careful.