And the towbar issue....
Hi all - the Mrs rather enthusiastically last week booked a caravan slot, which we are supposedly heading to tomorrow.
Now, this booking was on the day we took posession of the caravan - last Wednesday.
The towbar is due to be fitted to the i800 tomorrow, but the mechanic has called to say his electrics guy cannot make the appointment due to illness, the earliest he can manage is Friday, which is a bit annoying, but we were cutting the timeline *extremely finely* in my opinion.
The mechanic can fit the towbar - my question is, can I fit the electrics? It's a dedicated electric set for the car, and according to the site I bought it from (pfjones) it doesn't require the car to be reprogrammed / updated. The car is almost as ancient as I am, so there's no warranty issue.
I'm a programmer, relative is an electrical engineer, I'm wondering if between us we have what it takes? The kit looks like 'plug-and-play', - willing to be taken to task for over-simplifying the situation though?
Any recommendations folks?
Thanks
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I think I would amend my site booking, ESC.
Sorry, I can’t help with your query. You need to establish if you’re going to interfere with the car's canbus system among the many other things to be considered. Only you know if you have the knowledge and skills.
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Do I have the knowledge and skills? For lego maybe....
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To offer some confidence, when I had a Skoda Yeti I booked for a mobile towbar fitter to come and do it at home. I explained I wanted the dedicated towing module and coding and I was at great pains to explain that my car was factory-fitted with "towbar prep". This meant that it came with the bumper cut-out already done and with extra wiring that terminated in the boot, ready to accept the dedicated towing wiring module.
Come the day and the fitter arrives and in short order the hardware is fitted. He then comes to fit the wiring and finds he has brought a wiring loom intended for cars that do NOT have towbar prep, meaning it runs from the fusebox at the front of the car and requires significant interior trim removal to fit. The fitter offered to work out how to splice the module into my loom as he didn't have the right wiring with him and, on research, it turned out that the aftermarket wiring manufacturer he uses didn't even make one to fit a towbar prepped Yeti. The whole point of me specifying towbar prep on the car was to avoid this sort of shenanigans so he was sent on his way, leaving the hardware installed but no wiring.
I did a bit of online research and found that the VW official wiring module was not expensive and relatively easy to fit, so I ordered one and did it myself. I had no way to 'code' it but even without coding the basic road lights worked as they should - all the coding did was initiate towing stability, switch the car foglight off, disable the rear parking sensors and add the trailer to the alarm (alarm sounds if the towing plug is disconnected). I then booked it in at my local Skoda dealer and they coded it with no problems.
So, in summary, I managed it with no prior experience other than general car DIY skills from a bygone era. The hardest part was getting the interior trim panel off to access the wiring loom.
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I had a look at the installation manual, and it was intelligible up to a point - it started to lose me with plugging into various consols, and suggesting certain wires needed cutting - nah, it's a safety critical feature, doing a personal bodge isn't worth the hassle, and there is no way I'll have it done in a couple of hours - if I had all day, maybe.
Mechanic has called back to say he's giving it a go, and has a sparky on standby tomorrow, so we may be able to depart then. We lose one night, which is better than losing the van / points on the license.
Thanks for the responses, much appreciated. I now wonder what we will forget to take......
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corkscrew and bottle opener - essential pieces of kit.
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