Hi all,

Just wondering if any of you guys can help me or point me to the right direction on testing/checking if my reverse parking aid speaker is faulty or not.


Was hopping that someone can guide me on how to test the actual speaker itself and the 2 wires that plugs into it.


My reverse lights comes on when I put it in reverse gear (manual) with the ignition key in the 'on' position and also I can hear all 4 sensors ticking away but I don't hear any warning from the speaker when I put a big cardboard box close to the sensors.


This made me look for the speaker (under the rear parcel shelf) and removed it. the speaker itself looks ok but I have no idea on how to check/test it.


I got access to a multimeter, all I need now is instructions for testing.




Cheers!

 

sphynx, your problem lies in either the speaker or the wires going to the speaker from what you are describing. There are two checks that you can do. First, unplug the speaker and pull it from the car. Now, get your hands on a 9 VDC battery with a set of wires coming off of it with some exposed wire on the ends. What you are going to do is to touch one wire to one post and the other wire to the other post. As you make contact with the second wire, you should hear the sounder. If you don't, your sounder is toast and needs to be replaced.

Then, to verify that the computer is good, you will take the multimeter, set it to a VDC scale (20V scale should be plenty) and the put your car to activate the backup sensors and then touch the leads of the multimeter to the holes in the plug. You should see the multimeter jump up to about 12 VDC (anything over 5 VDC is good). Worst case, take a paper clip and stick one in each side of the plug to make it so you have an easier way of making electrical contact.

Wish you luck. Odds are, it is the speaker that is toast. That seems to be the common thing to fail if the sensors are all chirping away.

 

Hi Thermo,

Voltage at the wire plug is around 8-9 VDC and the speaker did really make any sound when I connected it on a 9V battery (apart from a quick single chirp)

I then re-connected the speaker to the wire harness plug and tried it, this time I can hear the speaker sounding but not very loud at all.

Do you know of an alternative way of replacing this speaker or is it have to be the exact type? (our local jaguar part dealer say it could take up to 4 weeks to get me a genuine speaker cause they have to order overseas)

Thanks matey!

 

sphynx, the best thing that I can tell you is to take your speaker back out and then connect a multimeter across the terminals of the speaker. It should read something like 3.8 ohms, 7.8 ohms or the like. In short, round to the nearest even number and then that will be the size speaker that you are looking for. Based on the amount of volume that comes out of the speaker, you are only looking at say a 5 watt speaker. The big thing is making sure you have the correct resistance for the speaker. From there, you will have to open up the box it sits in and figure out how you are going to mount the new speaker in. You might even get lucky and find that the resistance is written on the back of the speaker (number with a funny looking "O" - an O with feet). Then you would have to measure the speaker to find out what size speaker it is. Odds are, it will be something like a 3.5" speaker.