The wife pulled too far into traffic, and a passing car clipped the front end, ripping off the lower grille and license plate holder. I took it to my regular bumper repair guy (I hate that I have a guy for this), and he did a great job of cosmetically fixing the front end (mostly a few scratches on the front end) and installed a new grille. Immediately afterwards, we have had a persistent service indicator with the following two messages: 1. Icy conditions possible, drive with caution, and 2. Pedestrian Friendly Alert Function. The temps are in the 60s, so I know the message is erroneous. Moreover, the car is still emitting the pedestrian noise as usual. The warning messages were not present immediately after the collission or in the few days we drove it before tthe repairs were done. I'm thinking there must be two connections somewhere on the front end which are now disconnected? If anyone can shed some light on this, it would be greatly appreciated. I intend to have the bumper guy take another look in a couple days, and it would be great to have some idea of what to look for.
The timing is suspicious, but it could still be unrelated. Especially the icy conditions part, which may indicate it's sensing wheel slip. If it were me, I'd be considering taking it to the dealer.
We get the icy conditions warning before pulling out of our garage in Southern California, so I don't think it's sensing wheel slip. Moreover, the outside temperature isn't even displaying in the car anymore. I'm fairly certain that there is a wiring harness disconnected in the front end that will explain both of these warnings. The body shop plans to pull the grille off tomorrow to have another look.
Right. I didn't mean it was actually slipping, just that it thought it was. But yeah, if you think it's a wiring harness disconnect, then your bumper guy is prob your cheaper, easier option.
Turns out the body shop discarded the ambient temperature sensor when they removed the remnants of the damaged lower grille. It is located right at the bottom. Thankfully, it is only a $7 part. Interestingly enough, even after replacing it, we were still getting the icy conditions warning, and instead of no temperature display at all, it was now showing -40. I managed to clear the yellow dash warning with an obd2 reader and an app, and the Pedestrian Friendly warning, but the -40 was persistent, which also was messing with the HVAC system (impossible to get any AC regardless of settings). Our last desperation act was to disconnect the 12v battery for 30 seconds, and that did the trick! Hopefully, this post might prove helpful to someone else who has seemingly unrelated symptoms caused by a faulty or missing ambient temperature sensor.
