Quote:
Originally Posted by eddyther  It will appear, on the screen of the SLK something like "electrical problem" or "electrical failure", due to the connection of the sensors to the white reverse lamp.
Nothing else will happen, I mean everything will work ok (including the sensors, but if in the future I have an electrical problem I will not know because the message already displays on the screen.
This is what they told me.(they sayed it happened to them with few modern MB (from 2005)
About the tricks you said, do you know where can I find them?
Thanks a lot |
Sounds like the exact same problems with the C installs - I'll search around on the "other" forums and see if I can find the post and the way to work around it. I want to say that it involved tapping at the actual reverse light itself, but I'll try and dig up the specifics...
Can you post some pictures or a link to the actual kit you have? Most of these are pretty "standard" in that they only power the system when the car is in reverse, and they accomplish that by tapping their power from one of the reverse lights. MB senses "bulb failure" by checking load across the various circuits, so I can see where it would confuse things if the bulb where to burn out but the system still "sensed" the load from the backup unit's brain.
My gut feeling is that the worse case scenario is that the system would either sense the increased load on the backup light as a "overload" situation, and report some error, or that the system would not be able to detect when the bulb failed.
In situation #1 above, I'd suspect that this could be eliminated in one of two ways. First would be to use a low power relay attached to the reverse light to actually power the reverse sensors brain. The other would be (more expensive, but guaranteed to work regardless) to purchase a CANBUS reverse signal tap, and use this to trigger the power for the reverse sensor brain.
#2 above would to me be acceptable. I'd try and mitigate the risk by wiring the unit in series with the bulb, rather than just tapping the wire (ie - wire the brain is series rather than parallel). This way, if the filament is dead, you don't get power to the brain at all.... Need to think about this one a bit, and I'm not familiar with the SLK's reversing light configuration to know if this is realistic. Dan may be able to assist you on that bit...
If you are comfortable (or have a friend who is) working with your car's power system, I'd personally give it a try. Worse case is you find out it does not work, and you are no worse off than you are today. Best case is you get it working!