341: Blind Spot Angle Verification

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you check this out. The link is in the show notes. Hey, what's going on? Automotive World. Welcome to

another episode of the Automotive Diagnostic Podcast. My name is Sean Tipping. I'll be your host once

again for this week's episode. Thank you so much for joining me. Just be on the show this week,

and I'm going to be talking about Blind Spot Module or sensor calibration today. These are the

radar sensors that you're going to see on the rear corners of vehicles. You can also see radar

sensors that are effectively going to be the same thing, both on the front corners of some newer

vehicles. You could even group in the forward radar on these with the front radar for adaptive

cruise control. The calibration process is going to be relatively similar, and the function, of

course, is relatively similar. It's just what object are we trying to detect as the vehicle is

going down the road. There's a piece about the Blind Spot Module calibration that I really want to

touch on and the point of why I'm making this episode. I'll give you some general knowledge. A

lot of you are already familiar with these systems. They've been used for many years now, and we're

seeing them on just about every make and model in one way or another, whether it's just a front

radar or just the blind spot. There's some variation between the makes and models and the

calibration processes or lack thereof. Again, with the Blind Spot Module specifically,

we were having a little bit of a challenge in order to get these things calibrated correctly,

and I want to share the solution that we came up with, or I mean other people have come up with it

too, but the solution that we've implemented and just also some knowledge about the system and when

you're going to do a calibration on these blind spot systems, something or even just the radars

in the front in general, something that you should be aware of before you start setting up

targets and hitting buttons. Again, we're going to focus on the Blind Spot Modules rear corners

of the vehicle, and we get called in quite often. It's one of the services that we offer,

of course, is doing ADAS calibrations. After a vehicle repair, usually involving

body or structural repair in one form or another, a lot of the time it's body shops

that are going to be calling us for this, but sometimes shops too. It could also be just

replacement of the module itself because of damage or corrosion. We see that a lot with

General Motors vehicles, of course. They're well known to have major corrosion issues

in the Blind Spot Modules, and those specifically don't actually require any calibration.

They self-calibrate after you go drive the vehicle, and there's not even a dynamic function to

activate on most General Motors vehicles. Maybe something like brand new, but at least all the

ones that we've worked on so far, you bolt it up, you program it, and it's good to go. It slides

into a plastic locking mechanism that is glued to the inside of the rear bumper, and so outside of

maybe re-gluing that bracket to the inside of the bumper, you're not doing any physical adjustment,

you're not doing any calibration. There's not much to talk about there, but anyways,

my point of this is we get called in to do the calibrations on the ones that do require a calibration.

In order to do that, we're going to use a couple different tools in order to allow the module or

the sensor. Sometimes they are, I would say a lot of the time, they are their own independent control

module, which you can see on the topology of the scan tool. You can talk to that module directly,

you can get codes out of it. Sometimes, I should say a lot of the time, the two modules are set up

in like a master-slave configuration where maybe you can only talk to the left module, and then the

left module actually receives data on a private can from the right side or something like that.

Sometimes, you still have master-slave set up, but you can still talk to them both with the scan

tool. There's a lot of different configurations with it. In some cases, they are just a sensor,

I don't know, you could still consider it a module, but not a module in the sense that you would talk

to it directly with a scan tool, and one that comes to mind on that is like Chrysler Town and

Country minivans. The sensors themselves do their thing, they do the radar thing, and then there's

a separate module, which is your blind spot module, which takes information from both of those.

So, I don't know, the terminology gets confusing, but anyways, this is the radar unit that's going

to be bolted to the rear corners of the vehicle to detect someone that's in your blind spot, right?

And these are actually impressive sensors, not only that they can measure the distance and the

angle and whether there's a vehicle in your blind spot, but also they have to be able to

determine the difference between a stationary object and an object that is actually in your

blind spot, like a moving vehicle that is in the lane next to you. And it has to be moving in the

right direction, right? If imagine if you're just on a two-lane road, right, going opposite directions

and a vehicle passes by you going the opposite direction, you don't want the blind spot system

to trigger the light because that's not its purpose. That vehicle is moving away from you,

so it has to be programmed to catch that because essentially it's going to see that vehicle is

there, the radar electromagnetic waves that it sends out, it's going to hit that vehicle, but

because it's moving away, it's programmed to not trigger the light. Or if you drive by vehicles

that are parked on the side of the road, you don't want the light triggered, so it's programmed to

observe that. It's only going to be a vehicle that is moving with you, but in the opposite lane.

And they're set up physically in a way so that they can detect a vehicle at a certain spot,

right, your blind spot, okay? That's the idea. And that's going to change slightly depending

on the actual vehicle. And we'll talk more about that angle and how they're positioned in order to

do that depending on the different vehicles. Well, basically when these things get replaced,

or certain components removed, or again structural damage, and we see this a lot,

they have to be calibrated. But there's a second piece to this, and again this is kind of what

I wanted to talk about, is when there's damage to wherever that sensor mounts to. Usually this is

the rear quarter panel behind the bumper. There's going to be a bracket, and it's either going to

be spot welded or bolted to that rear corner of the vehicle. And then the sensor is going to

bolt to it and be positioned in a way that it's pointed towards the blind spot of the vehicle.

Now, when we go out to calibrate these vehicles, the ones that actually do need calibration,

we're either going to be using the radar cone that's going to reflect the signal back to the

radar, or potentially depending on the application number. It might be the Doppler setup, which

actually it reflects the signal back, but it can actually take the radar signal that's coming out,

and it can change the frequency that it goes back to the sensor. And from what I can read on this,

it's actually simulating a moving target with those Doppler setups. And there's Mazda's,

and there's Volkswagen Audis that require that setup. Most vehicles just use a cone,

and that reflected signal back is enough to do the calibration, but then some of them take the

Doppler. So if you're going to do these calibrations, of course, you have to be aware of what setup

you're going to need. And again, some of them are just dynamic. Some of them you just go drive,

and it figures it out. Some of them you have to activate the function with a scan tool and drive

it. But for the ones that, you know, we're getting called in for, these are the ones where we're

actually setting up a target at a specific point. Now, just a quick tip on this, if you want to

find measurements for where to place the target, of course, you can look in service information,

and you'll find it there as well. But if you want something really quick, that kind of speeds up

the process, you can go onto the Autel website and just look up ADAS coverage, and you can enter

your vehicle, and it will give you the setup and configuration for whatever system you're trying

to calibrate, including blind spot and radar. But what's nice is it just gives you the measurements

right there, and it tells you the tool that you need. You know, is it a cone? Is it a Doppler?

And in some cases, they summarize the placement of the target a lot simpler than what you might

find in service information. And a specific example of this is Toyota vehicles. A lot of them,

in order to place the radar in the correct position, they're having you measure an angle

based off of the centerline of the vehicle, and then going out from there and placing

the the radar setup. Now, not that you can't do that, that's definitely possible. But I like

just having a measurement out from the rear vehicle on the centerline and then over. And if I

have a five line laser or a couple of five line lasers, which we do, and which I would recommend,

if you're doing any ADAS work, is get yourself a couple of five line lasers that can both send,

they'll send, you know, lines out in multiple directions. Okay, so you can send a line out

that lines up with the centerline of the vehicle. And then it also sends out a line perpendicular

to that line. So you can go out and over the correct amount and place your target where it

needs to. And then you have to set the height of the target and make sure that it's pointed

correctly at the center of the radar. A lot of times it'll give you the height measurement

for that radar stand as well. So all of that, you can find that on that hotel website, it's free,

you don't have to log in, and it's quick, and it's easy, and it saves me time. So I thought I'd,

you know, mention that tip on here if you're looking for quick setup tips. Again, you can look

in service information and find it there too. It's just sometimes the setup in service information,

especially for some of the earlier vehicles, it's just a bit antiquated, in my opinion. Like,

you can look at some of these and they're using strings to set stuff up. And using the lasers

is by far the only way to go. It's so much faster. And I mean, quite honestly, probably more accurate

too. As long as you're doing your setup correctly with the plum bomb and the levels and all that

stuff. The lasers are the way to go for sure. So we're going to get our target setup into place

depending on the target that it needs and the position relative to the vehicle, obviously,

find in the center line, making sure everything's level, measuring, getting it all set up.

That's one piece of it. And when I first started doing this was the only piece that I really thought

about until we had some failures early on, we started doing these, we would either not be able

to get it to pass calibration, like we'd set the stand up exactly where it's told us to set it up,

and it just wouldn't pass wouldn't pass. Or in some cases, and this happened, it passes the static

calibration in the shop, but then you go drive it. And after driving it for a period of time,

when it's actually functioning in the real world, then it fails, it comes back with a code of like

misalignment or angle offer, you know, there's a variety of codes that can set and then you have

a warning light on and you have to fix it. So there's another piece to this, and you may or may

not be aware of it. It's really probably just depending if you've done ADAS calibrations or not,

because if you have, or especially if you live in a collision world, you know all about this,

but the physical angle of the sensor matters. Now, when we're doing the calibration with the radar

stand or the Doppler, it's going to calculate angles and it's going to make slight adjustments,

but only within a certain threshold. And a lot of vehicles, this is within a couple degrees

of where it needs to be, right? So it can only adjust its tolerances so far. And if it is physically

misadjusted, it either again, won't pass the calibration, because the radar stand is not

actually pointing at it. Or I should say it is not pointing at the radar stand. So you can't

pass it or sometimes I've had it where it passes and then fails out there. And this is because

the actual angle of the component is off. And this is a physical misadjustment either from

the bracket or the panel that the bracket is bolted to. Now, this goes for front radars too.

It's the same thing. And so when we get calls from shops saying, hey, you know, we need you to

come out and calibrate this radar, we are, our guys are trained and we ask for, hey, was there

damage to this vehicle? Like why are we calibrating this thing? Did you just replace it? Did you just

have the bumper off? Was it any type of collision? That's our real important question that we ask

is was there damage to this vehicle structurally? And if there was, we tell them, hey, we need

access to this sensor so that a lot of the times is bumper off so that we can physically

measure the angles of the sensor placement before we do the calibration. Because if we don't do

that, either it won't pass or it'll pass in the bay and then fail out on the road. And we don't

want to have to make a second trip and then charge you for that. Or we don't want to give you the

idea that, hey, we did it correctly. And then it comes back with a light and your customer is upset.

So we want to do everything correctly on that first trip. And so if there was any damage

to the vehicle, where a bracket might have been moved, or a panel shifted, we're going to measure

the physical angle of that component. And again, same thing for front radar, we see this a lot

with front radars, they get dinged or smacked in the front, and they'll replace the radar,

but they will not actually get that bracket in the correct position. And honestly, it's not

impossible, but it's tough to just eyeball that. It's very unlikely that you're going to get it

within a couple degrees of where it needs to be, just by eyeballing it, you're going to need some

type of measuring tool to get it where it needs to be. And, you know, of course, in some cases,

you can just replace the bracket. And a lot of times that, you know, may take care of it. But

it is possible to have a, hey, have you ever been faced with the challenge of sourcing,

installing and programming a used control module in a vehicle? I know a lot of us have.

It seems to be happening more and more often today with the volume of control modules on vehicles,

the cost of some new ones, or even the availability of new control modules in some cases used may

be the only option. So what do you do here? I strongly recommend checking out SJ auto solutions

and Tommy Oliva. Tommy offers a cloning service for use control modules to make these things

plug and play for the vehicle that you're working on. In a lot of cases, he is also able to source

the control modules if you're unable to locate one for the vehicle that you're working on.

But once you get connected with Tommy, he's going to offer fantastic support from start to finish

to make sure that that control module is going to work in your application. He's also got tech

support that he offers through his website, along with some free resources there as well

on information about used control module programming. So make sure to check out SJ auto

solutions. I can't recommend that enough. Structural damage in the component the bracket

mounts to. And we've seen that, bumpers get tweaked and panels can get tweaked. If you go way back,

this isn't a radar, but it's similar. I had a Subaru where the roof line angle was different

than what it needed to be. So crazy stuff can happen when these vehicles get into racks and

especially if you're dealing with, you know, a salvage vehicle that's been totaled, you know,

because of an accident. I mean, there's a there's a ton of reasons or ton of things that can throw

off the angle. So it's not always just the bracket, but either way, we want to verify the physical

angle of these sensors before we do our calibration. Now, this is kind of getting in the meat of the

episode and why I want to talk about this. There are two angles that you need to verify on these

sensors before you do the actual calibration. Alright, now there's a horizontal and a vertical,

right? So if you think a horizon is side to side, verticals up and down, vertical is easy.

This is simple. And if you have an angle gauge, you could use a bubble angle gauge. I have a

digital one, you just put the angle gauge up against it. And most of these sensors, and you

might want to check service information for the spec because there is variation. But almost all

these sensors want to be at 90 degrees in reference to the ground. Okay, so if you're looking at it

should be straight up and down. Okay, and that's simple. You put your angle gauge up to it, and

you're looking depending on which way you have it rotated, you either wanted it zero or you wanted

it 90. Again, there's variation in that. So check service information for this. And some manufacturers

don't give you this straight out, some do, but most of these are going to be 90. Now if you're

doing blind spot stuff, this is another thing, and there was damage on one corner of the vehicle,

you can use the other side as a known good. But I would question like, what kind of accident was

this in because it's possible both sides could be messed up. If you're working with a front radar,

I haven't seen one that isn't 90 degrees. I'm sure someone could probably give me an example of

where that's not the case. But just about every front radar that I have calibrated that I can

think of, it's going to be 90 degrees. Okay, now some of the front radars need a different tool

in order to do this, right, the blind spots, you can just put your angle gauge up to it.

You know, my angle gauge is just like a rectangular device and has a flat surface,

and I push it up against the, you know, the front of the radar, you could also do the bracket if

the radar is not on. I like to do it with the radar on, bolt it up, so that I know the actual

sensor is pointing the way that I think it is. But you know, there's an argument to say, and

actually procedures that have you do the bracket rather than the sensor, I guess that's personal

preference there. But on the front radar sensors, there are some that are dome shaped. Jeeps have

this Audi volt wagons have this on some of them. And there's a bubble sensor that kind of has a cup

on it that goes over these, and it will lock into place and you use a bubble to calibrate these

before you do the actual calibration. So those you wouldn't be able to use the flat angle gauge,

but again, we're kind of focusing on blind spot here. So vertical measurements, we've always

been able to do very easy stick the angle gauge on there and you know, adjusted it as needed,

whether that be manipulating the bracket or using shims, whatever it needs to be, you can do that.

Now, there's a second angle measurement that needs to be done. And this is for blind spot

modules, but it can be for front radar. The nice part about the front radar is you don't have to

look up a spec. The front radar should be perpendicular with the center line of the vehicle,

right? So imagine the center line going down the middle of the vehicle, you put a line directly

across that at 90 degrees, your front radar should line up with that for its horizontal angle.

Okay, and that does that is the thing that can be off for sure. Okay, but you don't have to

find a spec for that. Now, for the rear blind spots, this is where it is tricky, because they are at

moving target in the blind spot of the vehicle. And each vehicle set up a little bit different.

And so that angle relative to the center line of the vehicle is going to be different for each

vehicle. And so I've seen this as small as 30 some degrees and is large as 70 some degrees. And

I'm sure there's probably examples where it's even, you know, more pronounced than that. But what

I'm getting at is they're not all pointed the same way horizontally. And again, with the eyeball

thing, could I get a front radar that's kind of close to perpendicular to the center line eyeballing?

Yeah, I might still be off a little bit. Again, eyeballing this stuff is not the way to go.

But I'm not going to be able to do that very well at a 45 degree angle or a 55 degree angle

relative to the center line. Okay, again, I could probably get it straight up and down that vertical

I could probably get pretty close. But that horizontal one is where it's tricky. So how do

we measure this? Now, there are certain manufacturers that have tools for this Hyundai Kia being one

of them. And we actually have that tool. You take the kind of take the bracket apart a little bit.

And there's another component in this tool that bolts up to the bracket of the blind spot. And

it has a laser. And then you use that laser to compare the angle to the center line. And it's a

nice tool. It's kind of expensive. And it only really works on Hyundai Kia stuff. You could

probably get creative and use this on other man manufacturers, but you'd have to modify some stuff.

But of course, Hyundai Kia is not the only manufacturer where you need to measure this

angle. Anything with a blind spot that's going to bolt up to the back of the vehicle,

you are going to need to measure this angle if there was damage or suspected damage. And again,

we want to do this so that we can confirm when we actually do the calibration itself with the

radar cone, that everything was in the correct position before we hit the button and said it's

good. And if something needs to be adjusted, that's the point we'll adjust it now while the

bumper's off. And then then we can go ahead with our calibration. So there's tools out there that

can help you measure this angle. Autel has one. It's crazy expensive in my opinion for what it is.

If you look this up, it is a mat with lines on it. And it is a metal stand and it is an angle gauge.

That's it. They want $2,100 for this thing. So I never bought one of those because I'm like,

that's ridiculous. Now granted, if you're doing these calibrations and measurements all day,

yes, you can make your money back from that. But sometimes I look at something and I'm like,

there's nothing that special about this thing. I could make that and not pay $2,000 for it.

If it's a scan tool, I'm obviously not going to build a scan tool. So I'm going to buy it from

the person who can make it. But in this case, I saw it and I'm like, well, I could probably make one

of these things. So I got together with a few different people. I have a friend who works at

a machine shop and had us just make us a nice stand has a nice metal base. And we did a couple

different versions. We did a rectangular piece of metal that came out. And then we did a round

piece of like a rod basically that stuck into this base. And then we went to a print shop

and we had a mat made that just has lines that go across it with even divisions. And you could

roll this mat out and line it up with a center line. You can go the other way, use a laser,

line it up perpendicular to the center line and do some math either way. But basically,

you put this mat on the ground, you line it up so that it's either with or perpendicular to the

center line. And then you have this stand that it's going to sit on the mat. And it is going to

press up against the surface of the blind spot module. Okay, if you're not following me,

look up the hotel one, you can see you can see what the idea is. But what this is now is well,

actually, the third part to this are in one of our employees, a younger kid, we hired him last

summer, he's been doing awesome. He's into 3d printing. So he 3d printed us a mount that can

slide up and down on this metal rod. And it mounts up against the blind spot. Now the one caveat

here is some of the blind spots have a curved surface. Some of them are flat. We're still working

on the one for the curved surface, but we're we're moving in the right direction there. We have the

flat one down. Obviously, that's easier. But imagine a blind spot module, this will

butt up against the flat surface of that blind spot module. And of course, you would want to get

the vertical angle correct first. So get it at 90 degrees. And then you can do the horizontal one

after. But we bought that up against that surface. And then it sits on this mat. Now you could use

the bottom of the stand to do the angle measurement in relative to the lines on the mat. But what

my employee did, which is genius, is he put a laser on that shines down to the mat. So

the laser is in line with the mount that goes up against the blind spot module. So effectively,

the laser beam that comes down, it's just a line that shoots down on the ground,

is at the same angle as the blind spot module relative to its position of the center line,

right? So you're going to use the lines of the mat and the laser coming down and measure the angle.

And then again, you can compare to the other side, if that side was not damaged or, you know,

didn't have any movement, you could use that as your known good, or you could refer to

specification if the service information gives it to you. Some of them do, some of them don't.

A tip there, actually, you can look on the Autel site. And if you find that tool that I'm talking

about, they do have a PDF you can download that gives you a bunch of specifications for

different makes and manufacturers and what the angle is. It's not all of them. But it's quite a

few and we do have that document saved, just a PDF. So that's handy. So you wouldn't necessarily

have to rely on the known good side. Because again, well, what if both sides got hit, then

obviously you can't do that. But you're going to do that and figure out where that angle is. Now,

the laser thing is really cool. And I'm super pumped about it. I think it's awesome that we

were able to make something like that. You wouldn't have to go that fancy, though, right? You could

do it with just, you know, a piece of metal that's going to press up against that blind spot module

and some way to measure the lines on the ground. Now, like if you look at the factory methods

for doing this, Toyota has you do like a plum bomb from the different bolts on the bracket,

and then using the vehicle centerline. But if you read through that process, and I tried it

once before I had all this, it's an annoyingly long process to do. And I don't know, lots of room

for air too, in my personal opinion. I like the lines and the lasers. And then we're just using

we're just using a tool to measure that angle on the ground. And then we adjusted if needed,

right? Now, again, this is why we need stuff like this, because this angle is tough to pick out,

right? Five degrees when it's at an angle is tough to call if you don't have these measuring

tools in order to do them, right? But five degrees is way more than enough to either not be able

to pass the calibration or have problems when it goes down the road. So I just wanted to put that

out there to everybody that this is something to consider if you're going to be doing calibrations,

or maybe you're just trying to do a calibration for somebody, and it's not passing like you've

done your measurements. I've got my target in the correct place. I know I do, but it is not

passing the calibration for one reason or another. You might have to take the bumper off to look to

see is there any damage? Is there any, you know, was there a tweak to a bracket or anything like that?

You can have some other weird things too, right? You can have module issues, you can have metallic

stickers on the inside of the bumper that obviously the bumper had been replaced in that case.

There's other things that can prevent it, but that angle thing is like something I just wanted to

eliminate as a possibility, okay? And you can use this same thing with the front radar. The front

radars may be in a position where this stand idea wouldn't work exactly, but you could get creative

and figure it out. Again, the front's easier because it should be pointed straightforward,

and so it just needs to be perpendicular with the center line of the vehicle. So not as much

thought goes into getting that angle figured out, although again, it might take a little bit of work

to do that. And then the other thing is hopefully once we get everything dialed in, we kind of just

have our first couple prototypes of this setup right now, but once we get everything dialed in

and make sure that it works on all makes and models, I might have it available in case anybody's

interested. And this isn't like, hey, a sales pitch. I was just excited about this and I was

sharing it with some people and I already had some people ask me like, hey, can I get one of those?

Again, because, and nothing against Autel. I mean, charge what you want to charge, but

for what it is, I think $2,100 is a little ridiculous. So I would not be charging that much,

but I don't know exactly what the price would be just yet. But if you're interested in something

like that, shoot me a message. And we're probably, I don't know, a month or so away from like getting

it to a point where it's sellable. And then we can figure something out if you're interested. But

either way, you got a little bit more knowledge on the system now, in case you run into this. And

it was definitely a thing that was a little bit of a hassle and a roadblock for us that I think we

are pretty well set up to get past at this point. So that's all I got for you today.

Thank you for listening. Hope you enjoyed that and learned something. Other than that,

let's get out there, start fixing the world one card at a time.

341: Blind Spot Angle Verification

About this episode

mechanical engine testing

GDI diagnostics

advanced electrical testing

network diagnostics

Blind Spot Module

radar sensors

adaptive cruise control

ADAS calibrations

General Motors

master-slave configuration

CAN bus

Chrysler Town and Country

Chrysler Town

blind spot system

sensor calibration

radar cone

Mazda

Volkswagen Audi

Autel

bumper

front radar

control module

salvage vehicle

angle gauge

scan tool

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