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Retrofit Front Parking Sensors Audi TT (8S - Mk3)

moonstone

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Completed this today and so updating this thread with complete instructions. This is a fairly complex job and so if you've not done anything like this before, I don't recommend you start with this. This is a retrofit for an experienced DIY'er, rather than a novice.

I strongly recommend that you read this guide in its entirety before you attempt this or order parts.

This is a fairly meaty job this, with two options. You can either buy a complete kit from KUFATEC for over five hundred quid, which contains everything you need, fitting instructions and (I think) one of their coding dongles, or you can pull all the parts together yourself for much less and try to work out how to do it on your own.

I've gone for option 2 but KUFATEC have been quite competitive on the wiring looms, so I've purchased those from them directly (there is a snag with this so read on). Here's a list of the parts that you need. Note, that if you really want it, it makes sense to fit the automatic parking assist at the same time, but this also requires you to fit two new sensors in the rear bumper so it becomes a much bigger job. I did it on my RS5, used it twice and never bothered with it since. My M5 has it and the one time I used it, it kerbed an alloy! So I'm not doing it this time. If you want to do it, you need another parking module that supports it and a switch-bank in the cabin that has the button.

Tools & Parts needed:
3x Wiring Looms -1 for the sensors on the front bumper, 1 to connect the parking control module to the aforementioned loom on the bumper and 1 to connect the switch and speaker to said module.
4x Parking Sensors
2x Parking sensor holder brackets (4 if your using the original grill or if your grill doesn’t have mounts)
1x Parking control module to replace your existing (that supports the front sensors)
1x New cabin switch bank that has the parking assist button on it (you can't buy the button separately)
1x Speaker Unit - This goes in the cabin
1x Sealy Parking sensor hole cutter (allows you to punch the necessary holes for the sensors without any burrs that you'd get from drilling.

Firstly the wiring looms:
You can pull together second hand looms but I found new looms from KUFATEC to be cheaper. However, I did hit some snags:

Bumper wiring loom:
This works out of the box. No modification required. This loom has the plugs for the side sensors that are used for automatic parking as well. If you're planning on retrofitting that, you can use the same loom.

Parking Control Module to Bumper:
Thanks to the different location of the Parking module control unit on RHD cars, this loom is too short and so I had to extend the cable. I did this by using some spare 1.5mm/18awg gauge wire that I had and some heat shrink connectors. I extended the loom by around 2 meters, which is probably a bit longer than needed. There are 8 individual cables in this loom so you'd need 16 metres of 1.5mm wire.

The heat shrink connectors that I use are these. They're excellent for a variety of projects including this one:
.
You just stick both wires in and use a heat gun to shrink and melt the solder inside.

Control Module to Switch & Speaker loom:
This connects the new speaker to the control unit and the switch bank. Again this is geared for a LHD car where the speaker is mounted very close to the control unit. Not so on a RHD where the speaker and control unit are on opposite sides of the cabin. You can either choose to mount the speaker somewhere else or extend the part of the loom to that runs to the said speaker to allow you to mount it in it's OEM location (behind the switch bank on the roadster or behind the glove box on the coupe). In my case I decided to mount it on the drivers side of the dash near the control unit.

Parking Sensors, Module, Brackets & Speaker:
You'll need four of these and two different types:
2 x 5Q0919275C - These are for the grill and are angled so that the connectors don't foul the crash bar cover etc.
2 x 5Q0919275B - These are standard sensors that will go in the bumper. You'll need to paint these and I recommend that you do it before you fit them.
4 x 5Q0919133 - These are the rubber sealing rings that go around the sensors that seal them to the bumper. If you have a look on eBay you'll find many sellers that sell the sensor with the ring included.

Parking Control Module: Your current module is labelled as a 4K module (4 sensors), we need to replace this with an 8K module (or a 12K module if you're planning on fitting automatic parking). Required part numbers as follows:

For cars built before 09/07/2018 - 5Q0919294K
For cars built after - 5Q0919294M
If you want to have automatic parking - 5Q0919298K

I went for option 1 (my car is a 2015) from ebay.

For the brackets that hold the sensors in place, I recommend OEM brackets. I've used generic ones on a previous project for a car and the sensors sat too proud of the bumper. In this case you'll need two of these: 1S6919492F for the bumper. My car has an aftermarket grill that already has PDC mounting slots but if you're using an OEM grill, you'll also need another two of the above (which you may need to trim) and two trims for the grill. These will vary depending on your year and model. So I suggest you head here: https://www.lllparts.co.uk/catalogs/audi/RDW select your model and year and search for "Parking Aid" under the electronics section.

The part number for the speaker unit is 5Q0919279

PDC hole cutter:
Get yourself ones of these: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/142437509025 If this link is no longer working, you want to google "Sealey VS318 18.2mm"

This allows you to punch a perfect sized hole in the bumper for sensors without leaving any burr marks that you'd otherwise get if you were drilling.

Cabin Switch Bank:
Unfortunately, you cant swap out individual switches so you need to replace the entire switch bank (below the main vents) with one that has the button for park assist. There are various combinations of this depending if you have a retractable spoiler and/or auto-parking. Click here and you can find the part number your need based on the PR codes you're car has: https://www.lllparts.co.uk/catalogs/audi/RDW/TTRS/898/9/941/941050

If you don't know what PR codes are, these are the option codes that your car has. A bit of googling will give you the info you need and you can find the codes for your car on the build sticker on the boot.

In my case I found a switchbank on ebay that had Parking Sensors (but no automatic parking) and the button for the spoiler. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/155113165200
 
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moonstone

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Bumper
I'll split this guide into separate parts, starting with the bumper, but it doesn't really matter what order you do these in.

Step 1 - Bumper removal.
There's a couple of different ways that you can do this in terms of the screws underneath as there's a "closing element" that attaches the bottom of the bumper to the underbody protector below the engine bay. I've elected to keep the closing element attached to the bumper as I have a splitter and it's less hassle to keep it in place on the bumper. I've created a separate guide on how to remove the bumper and swap the front grill. Rather than replicate that here, please visit this link:

Now that you have the bumper off, you need to create holes for the sensors. If you have a standard grill then you may need to acquire trim pieces for the grill (see my info on this above) or you can simply create holes and hot glue the sensors in place. I'm not going to cover the specifics on the grill as I have a non-OEM grill that already has PDC holes and mounting brackets attached. I only had to create new holes on the bumper, but the same concept applies to the grill with a bit of creativity depending on what grill you might have.

On the bumper cover, you'll want to remove the washer fluid pipe from the polystyrene section behind the crash bar and move that to the side.

Remove-crashbar-insert.jpg

You'll also want to remove the two black brackets that are clipped and screwed into the sections below where the headlights would be. Once done you should be able to the see the markings for the PDC sensor locations as per the photo:

PDC-hole-location.jpg

Step 2 - PDC holes.
I then used a small drill to drill a pilot hole in the centre. This was too small to allow the bolt thread for the PDC cutter through so I then used a fatter philips head screw driver to make the hole bigger before then using the PDC hole cutter as shown below. The result is a nice smooth hole, exactly the right size, with no burrs on the edges. All you need to do is screw the bolt until the cutting die on the outer side punches through.

Drill-pilot-hole.jpg

Pilot-hole-complete.jpg

Rear-of-bumper-cutter.jpg


PDC-cutter-from-front.jpg

PDC-cutter-screwed-on.jpg

Hole-created.jpg

PDC-hole-complete-outside.jpg
 
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moonstone

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Repeat the above for both sides and next you're ready to install the sensors.

Step 3 - Sensor mounting
Important - Do not mount the self-adhesive brackets on the bumper without the sensor already clipped in place.

Take your PDC sensor and clip it into the bracket as shown:

PDC-sensor-clipped-into-bracket-before-placment.jpg

Now peel off the red film and get ready to mount it to the bumper with the PDC sensor clipped in. This ensures that you can locate it in the hole properly without running the risk of mis-aligning the bracket in a way that prevents the sensor from lining up with the hole properly. Make sure that you've put a rubber sealing ring on the sensor first. It's also a good idea to give the inner skin of the bumper a clean with alcohol or a degreaser like bug & tar remover (I used some Autosmart Tardis on a cloth).

Repeat the above for both sides and you should be left with this (paint on my sensors need a wee bit of a polish to blend the colour in better).

PDC-Sensor-mounted_2.jpg

PDC-sensor-mounted.jpg

You now need to attach your inner sensors to the grill. As previously mentioned this will vary depending on the grill you have, so I'm not going to cover it here.

Once all sensors are in place, you should connect them to the wiring loom. The main loom connector should be at the left-hand side as you face the inside of the bumper. The two white connectors are for the automatic parking sensors (so unless you're fitting auto parking) you can tie these up with cable ties out of the way. Run the loom across the inside of the bumper and plug into each sensor. It's not too difficult which ones relate to which given the position of the tails for each on the loom itself.

How you tidy up the cable is up to you. I used some cable ties and some hot glue to keep it out of the way on the crash bar cover before re-inserting the polystyrene insert on top of them. Remember to replace the inner brackets on either side. Once complete you're ready to put the bumper back on the car but don't do so until you've ran the second wiring loom that will connect this to the Parking Module.
 
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moonstone

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Parking Control Module Wiring Loom
As I mentioned above, the loom I purchased from KUFATEC is too short. It's for a LHD car, where the bung that leads wiring from the cabin to the engine bay is on the opposite side. This means that there's not enough length to get from the new PDC loom on the bumper to the parking module. With that in mind I extended it by two meters. I've listed my method in the first post above. I wrapped the whole thing with some Tesa wiring loom tape. As I'd already run the cable through the bulk head, I did it in-situ bit its obviously a better idea to do this at a work-bench/table etc.

The loom comes with a connector that the pins need to be inserted into, this is to make it easier pull the loom through the bulk-head, so wrap up the pins and pull it through before you insert them. The connector has the pin locations numbered and each cable has the corresponding number printed on it. You just need to make sure that you put the pins in orientated the right way. An easy way to do this is to plug the connector into the one on the bumper wiring loom before feeding the pins in. If you push them in the right way, you'll hear a click.

IMPORTANT - Before you feed the pins into the connector, you need to slide out the purple clip. Once you've finished, slide it back in the same way, paying attention to the fact that it's keyed to go in and out a certain way.

loom-feed-location2.jpg

The bung to pull the loom through is located just behind and to the right of the ABS module on the LHD side of the car. if you push a cable rod through it'll end up in the passenger footwell as shown.

loom-feed-cabin.jpg

You can now tie the loom to the end in the cabin and pull it through into the engine bay

loom-pull-through.jpg

Unwrap the pins and then plug them into the connector as described above. OR if you're like me, stand at the car for the next half an hour extending the wiring loom whilst hanging over the bonnet!

wiring-loom-extension.jpg

loom-extension3.jpg

Here's a look at the connector plug and the clip I mentioned earlier. You can slide it out the side with a small flathead screw driver.

connectorplug.jpg

Once you've completed this, you want to run then cable a sensible location to connect it to the bumper. I ran it down to the left of the LHS air scoop and secured it with a cable tie. This way, if you're ever removing the bumper in future, you can disconnect it.

connector-location.jpg

At this point you should now have the other side of the loom lying in the passenger footwell. You can now, reassemble the front end if you're confident that you've done everything correctly. However it might be an idea to leave the bumper off, in case you need troubleshoot anything when you're testing at the end.

Next up, we're on to the fiddly internal stuff...
 
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moonstone

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Internal Connectors.
We need to run the other end of the loom from the passenger footwell to the drivers side pedal area where the parking control module is, but first we're going to hop over to the drivers side, remove the trim pieces required and swap-over the parking control module.

In order to access it, we need strip down the following trims in order:
1. Remove Drivers side sill trim (just prizes up with some trim removal spatulas, a lot of the metal clips will come off and you'll need to remove them from the sill and put them back in the trim piece before reattaching later.
2. Remove the handle for the bonnet release. There's a small push clip similar to the handle under the bonnet itself, that you need to pull out. That then allows you to pull the handle right off.
3. Drivers side dash end-trim ( the plastic bit that says TT on it) - just leaver it out.
4. The lower A pillar trim piece right at the end trim you just removed.
5. The lower A pillar trim piece that you removed the handle from.

Your car should now look something like this:

interior-trim.jpg

PDC-module.jpg

The parking control module is held in by two push clips. disconnect the connector from it and then use a small flat head to lever the push pins from the clips and you can now remove it. Install your new module in reverse.

Note that it is possible to do this without removing the lower dash trim but you'll have limited working space and it'll be difficult to tidy and route cables. If you want to remove it then there's two 8mm hex bolts on either side underneath that are easy to find and a single 8mm hex head that's on the side (behind the bit of trim with the TT logo on it). Remove these and you can then just pull it out from the top. The clips are tight so it needs some force. You'll need to disconnect the footwell light, light switch and the OBD socket as well as the air sensor on the opposite side before you take it out of the way completely.

Now we need to run the wiring loom from the passenger side to the parking control module. You've got a couple of options here. If you're planning to install the speaker in the correct factory location, you need to remove the glovebox (if it's a coupe). If you're not doing this, a shortcut is to use a cable rod and pull the loom through where the end of the centre console meets the bulkhead carpet (under the footwell). See below:

loom-pull.jpg

Pull it through and connect it to the lower connector on the module.

Final Wiring loom
Now we get onto the final wiring loom of the three. This has a connector for the speaker and pins that slot into the switch panel connector on the centre of the dash and the existing black connector that you found on the parking module.

If you plan on having the speaker in either of the factory locations (behind the glove box for the coupe or behind the switch bank trim on the roadster) you'll need to extend part of this loom to suit, as the tail for the speaker connector isn't long enough. Your other option it to locate it in the dash in the drivers side somewhere. The choice is yours but don't bury it away so you can't hear it!

Before we go any further, you need to remove the existing switch bank. This requires two radio keys. You can find more info on this here:

Once removed, you need to dismantle the red connector so you can insert two pins from the wiring loom into it. The wires are numbered and so is the connector:

red-connector.jpg

Before you get access to the connector, you need to peel back the wiring loom tape so you can move the cables out of the way. Then you can simply lever the clip and slide the inner connector out. Plug the marked wires into the corresponding pin holes (each wire is already numbered). Once complete, slide the connector back in and re-tape if you have some loom tape. Run this new loom behind and under the drivers side over to the where the parking module is.

Now re-assemble the switch bank trim, feeding the connector through and plug it into your new switch bank with the parking sensor button on it. NOTE if you're choosing to mount the speaker in here, now is the time to do that (assuming you've extended your loom).

Photo below courtesy of @Frizzley showing factor location for the Roadster.

buzzer-pic.jpeg

We're now going to do the same job with the black connector at the parking module. Again you need to peel back the loom tape to move the cables. Once done, disassembly is a wee bit different. You slide down and remove the piece shown below to slide the inner connector out. Again you simply push the pins into the corresponding slots on the connector (once again the numbers are marked on each wire) before reassembling in reverse and plugging it back into the module.

balck-connector.jpg

black-connector2.jpg

Make sure you've mounted your speaker in your chosen location (I used a bit of VHB tape to stick into the inner lower dash piece but I'm going to go back and extend the loom and put it in the factory location at some point) and then reassemble all the trim pieces in reverse. Again, it may be an idea to wait till you test the system first, in case you need trouble shoot any mistakes later.

With everything installed we move onto coding.

NOTE: If you get an airbag warning light, it's because you forgot to reconnect the front crash sensor connector on the front bumper.
 
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moonstone

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Coding
It's likely that this will work out of the box with no coding required but this isn't guaranteed. This can be done via OBDeleven or VCDS. I've no personal experience with Carly etc.

Note that if you've already done the coding in the past to activate the sensor display on the virtual cockpit then there's no further coding required here and you can choose configuration options for speaker volume etc by going into Car>Settings>Driver Aids on the MMI.

For coding you want to go into Controller 76 - Parking> Long coding and make sure that Visual Display For Park Assist is set to OPS.

On other platforms, there's been a requirement to change the number of sensors via coding but it looks like this is hardwired into the actual module of these cars.

If you do this retrofit and face any coding issues, let me know here and I'll be happy to help.
 

Frizzley

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Brilliant tutorial - appreciate the time, thought and effort put into these build threads.
 
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