Ok this is purely a PSA for anyone else who happens to back into things and smash their tail-lights!

I smashed the first one two years ago – not badly – just a small piece of the glass missing. I could live with it and barely noticed it. Then a year ago I jack-knifed the caravan and did the other one – a bigger piece missing, but all still functional.

With 75k on the clock I was feeling it is getting close to trade in time, so I figured I’d fix the lights up. I already knew a genuine light assembly was around $1350/side so I wasn’t keen to go that route. To claim insurance was gonna be $700 excess per claim (separate incidents) so I figured I’d hunt until i found some online – which I did at eBay for around $150 each.

So I removed the old ones, installed the new ones and felt like I’d had a real win! $300 instead of $2700. But… then the blind spot radar, cross traffic indicator and rear camera all started flicking up fault codes.

With it due to go in for a service I just figured I’d ask the guys at Ford to check it out and clear them.

So I dropped it in, picked it up and it was still flashing like a Christmas tree – the apprentice doing the $400 oil change on my car didn’t think to attend to the codes… So I had to come back, but with the promise it would be attended to immediately and while I wait.

I dropped the car, took off for an hour and then came back – to see the car still sitting where I’d left it… Hmmm not good… I ‘expressed my disappointment’ at the time wasted and got it looked at straight away.

The verdict was that both rear radar sensors were gone and they would need replacing – but the guys at Ford didn’t want to do the job as they old replace whole assemblies. Really?… And then the radar units were $400 each…

So this is starting to become less of a win and more of a pain in the arse!

With a fairly open day I cruised down to Osborne Park to a mob called Adas who specialise in the recalibration of these units. (Up until now I hadn’t realised they needed recalibration.) They spent a couple of hours on the car but couldn’t get the left radar to function. The conclusion was that it had probably got water in it because of how long I had left it exposed. Oh and the wiring harness also needed replacing due to corrosion. I left there and drove home thru traffic frustrated at a day spent ‘waiting’ and then to no avail.

Today I was to pick up the radar and the harness return to Os Park and let them fit and calibrate. So I picked up the radar ($400 – but then Ford had told me I needed both…) and the harness which I was guessing would be a ridiculous $70 or $80 turned out to be $200… ouch!

I dropped the car back at Adas and took off as they felt they may need it overnight. No worries – what’s another trip to Ossie Park from Yanchep! Turns out they got it fixed the same day, all for the sum of $1137 – which covered scan. fault finding, and a couple of calibrations. It was about twice as much as i was expecting, but to be fair, these guys were brilliant. Fast service, squeezed me in and knew what they were doing. I’d recommend them to anyone – but they aren’t cheap. (Lucrative business opp for someone I am thinking…)

I drove home realising the whole exercise had cost me about $2000… and a couple of days of wasted time.

In hindsight an insurance claim should have been the way to go, but then i wasn’t aware of the need for recalibrations and the dodgy parts.

While the $2k end result wasn’t what I expected a little bit of research, pulled up another owner who had spent $1300 on the light and then needed 3 hours of labour by Ford at their workshop rates to calibrate and fit… Makes your butt cheeks clench just contemplating it!

So if you have backed into your caravan or a lamp-post and damaged your rear tail light my tip is claim it on insurance and do it quickly so the internals don’t corrode, otherwise they may not be covered under the claim.

As you were.