Front parking sensors

[zoylander]

In the days when most bottles were made of glass, my father strung up a tennis ball in the garage to tell him when his big Armstrong Siddeley was safely in, and in case he over shot it there was an old railway sleeper to stop the front wheels. He described this as a belt and braces solution.
I position a rock on the garage floor to tell me that (a) the front of the car is a safe distance from the freezer and (b) the rear is in far enough to be able to close the garage door without hitting the tailgate. Yes the rear parking sensors go mad when they pick up the door frame as I reverse out of the garage, but only for a few seconds.
The CX-3's poor rearward visibility makes reverse parking sensors essential, but I have never felt the need to have front sensors fitted.

[1Monty]

,,, It is a pity they couldn't be installed to only engage when reverse gear is selected ...

I don't think you'd want the front sensors to only work when you're going backwards.

Your dealer will have fitted a button on the dash that you can use to temporarily disable all the front parking sensors, which you could use to silence the beeps when parking in your garage, but then you will need to find some other way of letting you know when you're close to the end wall (such as a brick on the floor which, I believe, is the method st3v3cx-3 uses).

I had the same thought

Sorry Dave

[DaveG]

That's OK Monty, think I will change my username to " silly old fart " lol.

[Dogfuzz]

All useful--but just to be clear-should i have a Front Parking Sensor Switch facility plse on my new CX3 --or are we talking about an £add on accessory?. My wife would like to be warned when she is getting to close to the car/wall/obstruction at the front as well as the excellent auto guidance provided by the rear sense system?
Thanks

[st3v3cx-3]

All useful--but just to be clear-should i have a Front Parking Sensor Switch facility plse on my new CX3 --or are we talking about an £add on accessory?. My wife would like to be warned when she is getting to close to the car/wall/obstruction at the front as well as the excellent auto guidance provided by the rear sense system?
Thanks

From my experience, with the 2016 model CX-3 and the dealer fitted front sensor option, I think your wife will find she'll be "deafened" and annoyed by the consistent front parking sensor beep starting from a couple of feet from the open garage doorway till the car is parked and the engine switched off. Only way to remove the noise is to switch them off using the dash mounted switch and that defeats the object of using them for garage parking. Unless you've got a double width garage in which case it might not pick up the closeness of the side walls assuming other items aren't being stored either side of the car and it is driven in centrally. It is the outside pair of the four front sensors that are the problem I'm sure and unfortunately Mazda don't use a 3 way switch allowing all sensors on, just the inside pair on or all sensors off.

I'm not sure if the new 2018 European model coming out imminently has front parking sensors as standard on certain models or if they are still a dealer fitted option on all models. I suspect the latter.

Edit: 21-08-18. Have checked the latest 2018 brochure and the situation regarding parking sensors is :-

SE Nav + No parking sensors at all as standard
SE L Nav + Rear parking sensors only as standard
Sport Nav + Both front and rear parking sensors are standard

See an extract from the Sep 2018 brochure below

Mazda CX-3 Brochure Sep2018 Choices Extract.pdf

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