Park assist disable?

Hello Porsche Wizards, I’ve recently added a bike rack to the rear of my 987.2 , which is equipped with park assist. This means that while the rack is attached to the car, which is almost always, any time I back up, the park assist system is yelling at me. I’d there a way to trick the system to be quiet either mechanically, electrically, or through software? Ideally something that would be easy to “reverse” for the few times I take off the rack. thanks!

I might suggest seeing if there's a way to remove the coding for it? Foxwell may be able to do this, if you can find someone around your area with one? Then you can buy one... or you can buy one on Amazon and if it doesn't work, you can return it? I don't have this feature on mine, so I can't test it for you... but I have heard of others disabling things like airbags and such when they installed racing seats, etc. Where are you located?

I have a Foxwell , but don’t really know how to use it very well, yet. I’ve poked around a little bit, but nothing jumped out at me? I should spend some more time exploring in there. And I’m in the Monterey, CA area 🙃

Well, I can't help you in person, but look around in there. The key is to look into the codings section. That's where you go to change settings in the car. There are many modules in the car, so chances are that this selection would be in the rear module (I'd guess) or maybe in the comfort/convenience ones. That's where I'd start - take a look in there and see if you can find anything that might make sense. You don't have to change anything - just look around. Once you find something, let us know, as we're all curious. Then, take pictures or documentation of what the setting is, THEN change it and see what happens. Worst case, you can switch it back to what you pictured/documented. But be sure to do this on a "low stress" day, in case something goes awry... you never know!

So I poked around in there a bit and definitely got optimistic when I saw a park assist control module however, that only gives the option to change the vehicle variant? I saw no reason to change that. looking around some more, I went to see if I could turn off Park assist entirely, and that seems to be found in the gateway control module Select to see the list of Down at the bottom, I found the park assist I turned that to “not installed”, but the car still beeps at me in reverse (due to the rear mounted bike rack). I also went into the live data section and verified that it was still reading the sensor outputs, etc., even while “not installed”, which it was. It really seems like uninstalling the park assist module should just turn off the system? Is there some other magic trick I’m not aware of to get a change like that to stick?

This is mostly for just documentation. I found the park assist wiring diagram. I need to look a little more closely, but IIRC, the connector inside the rear bumper for the park assist was a 6 pin connector. Current thought is that I may try to wire up a a switch in line with pin 11 that will cut power to the sensors when the rack is installed, and then "make" the connection when the rack is removed. This would have to be a weatherproof nominally closed switch. Not sure if this would cause error codes approaching it this way? A manual switch in the cabin before terminal 30 would probably also do the trick, but i'm definitely less familiar with what will trip a fault code and light something up on the dash. If anyone has any electrical experience/conjecture on the matter, i'd appreciate it. Thanks!

Good job diving in, and thanks for posting your findings! I agree, "not installed" should have ignored it, I would think. That being said, maybe there are other settings elsewhere for this as well. I've found that some devices on the car has multiple areas to enable/disable them... don't know why. It could be because Foxwell is basically reverse engineered... so they may have simply guessed wrong? I agree, disconnecting the power to the sensors may work. It shouldn't take much to try. Skip the switch for now, and just disconnect that wire somehow? Ideally, if you can push the pin (or socket) out, that should be enough? Pulling the fuse power is an even easier option, as you noted, but this would cause the CAN signals to be lost, so lots of things could have an issue if you do that. But it's something you could try... it's easier than pushing/pulling pins on a connector? If it doesn't work out, you just reconnect it and reset the ECU ? Worst case, you can cut the pin 11 wire... if it stops, then you're on the way. If not, then you will have to reconnect it, but if you cut it in a "good" place, then you can easily reconnect it, if you're electrically skilled a little? I would probably solder it and then heatshrink over it. Shouldn't be too hard. They also sell butt connectors with integrated water seals that could work? EDIT: One more question, are you sure your Not-Installed setting was "saved" to the car? I would set it, disconnect the Foxwell , then reconnect and make sure it "took"?

Any way to mount the sensors into the bike rake? That way you'll be alerted if you are about to back into something.

That's a cute idea. I would say you could probably do that. If you can duplicate the connection from the bumper-setup, then you can easily disconnect that and plug in the new one. Then just arrange the sensors in a similar way on your rack. I wonder if you don't need all 4 sensors... you may be able to get away with 2 or 1 instead? I don't know how the controller will behave with missing sensors - if it's only looking for a sensor signal, then it may not care that there is none from the others. Again, this is something you can test by pushing signal pins out, and seeing if the controller cares. I would do this before buying components and then not needing them.

I looked into it a bit more and think I found the fuse (7.5A in location C7) in the fuse block down by the feet. I elected not to try pulling it because several other things were tied to that fuse, as well. Bumper wiring is plan A currently, but will need couple hours for disassembly, test, reassembly. I think moving the sensors (would only need to do the inner left and inner right, based on looking at the real time data), is an interesting idea, but only if I didn’t want to be able to remove the rack. Also, long term, I’ll be installing a backup camera, so not really worth the effort. Next test will be just pulling the inner two sensors to see how that goes. That will wait for a weekend or two. Off to a ride this morning!

So a bit of a delay before I got to this. I ended up installing a switch inline with the park assist sensors common ground line (brown with a black stripe). I mounted the switch down by the rack rails so I can just turn them on or off while I’m down there anyway. “Off” isn’t quite right as I get a single long beep after putting it in reverse (about 3 seconds), I know it is logging an “improbable value” code somewhere, but that is WAY better than it screaming at me the entire time I’m backing up. I’m not 100% thrilled with my execution, but it is pretty hidden and will do the job for now, and all writing changes are in the bumper wiring harness, so very easy to replace if desired in the future. I had an “oh sh$t” moment during the project, though. I was initially trying to chase back the wire to somewhere inside the car and the brown wire with the black stripe goes to a big white connector in front of the left rear light. I unplugged it to see if I could do some de-pinning, but decided against it. Leaving that connector unplugged will give all sorts of errors about trans faults, engine low power, lights, etc. yikes. Unsurprisingly, connecting everything back up fixes it 😳. Last note, I returned that Foxwell unit because I’m pretty certain that it disabled my sport/sport+ functionality with no clear way of getting it back. Didn’t see that for a while. Headed to an Indy for them to restore that functionality tomorrow.