numl0ck
Veteran Member
UPDATE: The installation is complete and is documented below.
After working at it for 5 hours, a few pizzas and beers later, the switch is not installed, nor working and here's what happened:
When it arrived in the mail, all looked good. The switch mechanism is an actual VW part, and it looks like they manufacture a custom top with the requested logo. The red light looks good, and matches nicely. That's where the fun stops.
Here is a picture of the button:
The pigtail is meant to plug in to the ESP switch, and then you plug the white part that is plugged into the ESP switch into the male prongs you can see in the photo. The purpose of this is to illuminate the red LED when you turn the lights on. The wires that are stripped back were soldered to the circuit board of the garage door opener in a way to act as the button, so the garage door opens when pushed.
Now jump ahead 3 hours. I tapped into the fuse box using an "Add-a-circuit" found at your local auto-parts store.
The garage door opener is powered by a 12v battery but it can only handle ~1.5amps, and after putting everything together for a test and we start to see smoke from the garage door opener. I quickly unplugged the "Add-a-circuit" and we evaluate the situation. We put the battery back into the remote and it still worked. Ok, maybe there was no major damage done. We just won't power it from the car battery until we can install resistors. I'll leave the battery in the remote for now.
Jump 2 hours, and food and beer. We're going to assemble everything just so I can use the new button in the car, and we'll worry about a permanent power source later. After putting it all together, this is what we found: After installing the pigtail into the ESP button, and then the plug/power for the ESP button, and lowering the tray in place, the bottom of the ESP button hits the air duct for the rear seats, and there's no way around it.
That's a good 1/2" gap before the two pieces are able to be screwed back in. And you can see how by extending the ESP button assembly (as per instructions) it hits the air duct.
The only solution I see is to move the ESP button over one spot, but that would require a new square cover (not one with rounded edges). And the garage button won't work, because it has 4 square corners, and two of them need to be rounded (we tried that, it doesn't fit).
So now, I'm back to square one. ESP button installed, and 4 blanks. The garage button is sitting in my center console and I'm stuck using my garage remote. Oh and to top it all off, we did burn something in the remote that was smoking. Apparently, once it cooled off we put a battery back in it, and tried to make it work, but nothing.
I need to figure out a way to illuminate the red LED without using power from the ESP button. I have photos of every step of the installation, but they are kinda pointless because it didn't work.
When I figure out a solution, I will gladly post it. Suggestions?
After working at it for 5 hours, a few pizzas and beers later, the switch is not installed, nor working and here's what happened:
When it arrived in the mail, all looked good. The switch mechanism is an actual VW part, and it looks like they manufacture a custom top with the requested logo. The red light looks good, and matches nicely. That's where the fun stops.
Here is a picture of the button:
The pigtail is meant to plug in to the ESP switch, and then you plug the white part that is plugged into the ESP switch into the male prongs you can see in the photo. The purpose of this is to illuminate the red LED when you turn the lights on. The wires that are stripped back were soldered to the circuit board of the garage door opener in a way to act as the button, so the garage door opens when pushed.
Now jump ahead 3 hours. I tapped into the fuse box using an "Add-a-circuit" found at your local auto-parts store.
The garage door opener is powered by a 12v battery but it can only handle ~1.5amps, and after putting everything together for a test and we start to see smoke from the garage door opener. I quickly unplugged the "Add-a-circuit" and we evaluate the situation. We put the battery back into the remote and it still worked. Ok, maybe there was no major damage done. We just won't power it from the car battery until we can install resistors. I'll leave the battery in the remote for now.
Jump 2 hours, and food and beer. We're going to assemble everything just so I can use the new button in the car, and we'll worry about a permanent power source later. After putting it all together, this is what we found: After installing the pigtail into the ESP button, and then the plug/power for the ESP button, and lowering the tray in place, the bottom of the ESP button hits the air duct for the rear seats, and there's no way around it.
That's a good 1/2" gap before the two pieces are able to be screwed back in. And you can see how by extending the ESP button assembly (as per instructions) it hits the air duct.
The only solution I see is to move the ESP button over one spot, but that would require a new square cover (not one with rounded edges). And the garage button won't work, because it has 4 square corners, and two of them need to be rounded (we tried that, it doesn't fit).
So now, I'm back to square one. ESP button installed, and 4 blanks. The garage button is sitting in my center console and I'm stuck using my garage remote. Oh and to top it all off, we did burn something in the remote that was smoking. Apparently, once it cooled off we put a battery back in it, and tried to make it work, but nothing.
I need to figure out a way to illuminate the red LED without using power from the ESP button. I have photos of every step of the installation, but they are kinda pointless because it didn't work.
When I figure out a solution, I will gladly post it. Suggestions?
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