[M340iwoody]

Seven years with my F30 335d and never any sensor damage. Only 6 weeks into M340i ownership the n/s front outer sensor gets well and truly clobbered by a stone.

Anybody know if you can protect the front sensors with PPF and they will still function correctly?

Cheers,

Woody

[paulockenden]

I’d imagine PPF will reduce the sensitivity of the sensor. The surface is effectively a loudspeaker (albeit at inaudible frequencies), so gluing a sheet of plastic to it is going to dull the response.

[xenon]

I'd say at the frquency in which it operates a piece of film about 0.1mm think will have a negligeable effect on both operation and protection. PPF won't protect against an impact like that.

[Charlie (Wessex)]

Yup - I had a stone in my front PDC. They said "never seen it before guv".

Word of warning....don't go to a dealer to change it, or if you do, becareful of their costs. Charged £190 to plug in their diagnosis machine when I had already told them what the problem was. Think it came in at £470 leaving me with a sense of being completely ripped off.

[paulockenden]

I changed my own when I had an E60. Dealer quite was many hundreds, as apparently it involved taking the whole bumper area off.

I bought the new sensor for a few quid on eBay and managed to swap them just fine without taking the bumper off. Strange eh?

[bmnut]

Originally Posted by paulockenden

I changed my own when I had an E60. Dealer quite was many hundreds, as apparently it involved taking the whole bumper area off.

I bought the new sensor for a few quid on eBay and managed to swap them just fine without taking the bumper off. Strange eh?

And that presumably is where the ridiculous price comes into play as the dealer would probably send it to their 'approved bodyshop' to do that, I know my dealer would probably say 'oh well that will have to be a bodyshop job'......no wonder we call them 'stealers'!

[Bc2005]

One rear sensor was damaged when my M340i was rear-ended, and the fix got a little complicated. Body shop fixed the bumper and replaced the sensor, but would not release the car because the PDC system then showed an error. Said it was a safety issue, so it should not be driven.

Body shop was run by a Mercedes dealer, so they brought in their roving “electronics fixer/expert”, who also could not get the system to recalibrate. Finally had to send the car over to the repair shop at the BMW dealer, who got the system to recalibrate.

[Charlie (Wessex)]

Originally Posted by paulockenden

I changed my own when I had an E60. Dealer quite was many hundreds, as apparently it involved taking the whole bumper area off.

I bought the new sensor for a few quid on eBay and managed to swap them just fine without taking the bumper off. Strange eh?

Had one that was broken on one side and used to bend back a bit and pick up the body work and beep away. Bit of glue sorted it out, and seemingly glue on the PDC sensor surface didn't cause issues.