Parking Distance Sensor rubber ring seal fitting

[BeardyJon]

I took my car to the local hand car wash to clean all the bugs off it and the guy has blasted the rubber ring seal out of one of my parking sensors (as well as stripping off some of the paint/clear coat too ).

Has anyone ever had to try fit one of these before? I’ve tried to jimmy it back into place but having a lot of trouble getting it back in. Is there an obvious/easy way to get the rubber seal back in its place?

[ihadablackdog]

Wow. Did they tell you at the time, or was it one of those drive through ones were you drive it to the different stages and then drive away...so not noticing until after you'd left?

I'd think they have insurance to cover this, but i don't fancy your chances of proving it was them.

Think they are mounted from behind, and the rubber might be stretched now. Might be this part no: 51117844395 (search on realoem.com) also two available on ebay.co.uk but I'd check with a dealer first.

[BeardyJon]

I didn't notice until I got home. The guy clearly hoped to get away with it.

I went back as soon as I got home and saw the damage and talked to the owner. He said his insurance doesn't cover him for damage to paint work, and that he reckons the seal on the parking sensor should be easy to fix.

He gave me his number to call him if I have to pay to get it fixed, but he won't budge on the paint work. Said that there's a stone chip which helped the paint to strip off. I've argued that the guy shouldn't have had the hose so close to the car as he clearly did (looking at how narrow that stripped part of lacquer is), and he said that the pressure is set to 15 Bar to be safe on all paintwork.

I'm just a regular idiot about these things, so didn't really know where to go from there, so he's not paying for the paint work to be repaired and I'm left trying to figure out if I can simply refit the seal on the sensor.

[ihadablackdog]

Approved bodyshop estimate I reckon (or dealer)...get one for the paint and one for the sensor....then pass the sensor estimate to him (he's nearly offered to pay for that). If it's just that black rubber bit, I wonder if its possible to get that on its own, and if you know how the sensor is fitted to the bumper, would probably be quite easy...however, I think its from behind, so might be a bumper off job.

Don't know about the paint...perhaps the bodyshop can sort that, or it might be a whole bumper respray.

If the bumper needs to come off for a full respray, then they might not charge to fit the sensor rubber.

Maybe someone else can comment who has more knowledge.

[dr_john]

I had a stubby aerial bent at an angle at the car wash. I didn't notice it until I got home and figured that there wasn't much point going back as I couldn't prove it was done by them.

Simple and inexpensive fix in my case