Network diagnostics means checking how different parts of a car talk to each other using special wires and signals, to find out if something is broken.
The Blind Spot Module is a safety feature that helps you see cars or things that are hard to see in your side mirrors. It uses sensors to warn you if something is in your blind spot.
Radar sensors are like eyes for the car that use radio waves to find things nearby. They help the car know if there are other cars or objects close by.
Adaptive cruise control is a smart feature that helps your car keep a safe distance from the car in front by slowing down or speeding up automatically.
General Motors is a big car company that makes brands like Chevrolet and Cadillac. Some of their cars can have problems with rust that affects parts like sensors.
The Chrysler Town & Country is a type of car called a minivan, which is great for families because it has lots of space inside. It has special sensors that help with things like safety and making the car easier to use. People talk about it because it helped bring these helpful features to many cars.
A blind spot system helps you know if another car is next to you where you can't easily see. It warns you so you don't accidentally hit that car when changing lanes.
After fixing or changing parts of a car, the sensors that help keep you safe need to be adjusted so they work right. This adjustment is called calibration, and it helps the sensors spot other cars properly.
Front radar is a sensor at the front of the car that helps it see other cars or objects by sending out radio waves. It helps keep you safe by warning or slowing the car if something is too close.
A control module is like a small computer in your car that helps control how things work, like the engine or brakes. When you replace it, you might need to copy its settings so it works right.
A salvage vehicle is a car that got damaged so badly it was called a total loss by insurance. It might need a lot of fixing before it can be driven again.
and a ton more. Once you purchase one of these training seminars, you can access this at any
time that you want through your account at AutomotiveSeminars.com. You can rewatch the
training a year, two years later, which makes this training even more valuable. I highly recommend
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.
About this episode
Dive into the intricacies of blind spot radar sensor calibration, focusing on rear corner modules used in many modern vehicles. The discussion covers different module configurations, calibration challenges after body repairs, and the importance of precise target placement using tools like five-line lasers. Unique insights include variations in calibration methods across manufacturers, the use of Doppler setups to simulate moving targets, and practical tips for quick measurement referencing via the Autel website. The episode also highlights common issues such as corrosion in GM modules and stresses the need for accurate setup to ensure proper blind spot detection functionality.
This week on the show I share our experiences with calibrating blind spot modules/sensors on vehicles that have been in a collision. In addition to the standard radar calibration, the physical mounting angles of the sensor must be measured and adjusted if damage occurred. Listen to hear our solution to measuring both the vertical and horizontal angles.
