CarStyle4You Switch Installation

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?

which of their covers did you end up choosing ? I wish they offered a "make your own" option. I've been trying to find a "Funk" button to fit in that position forever.

I choose the garage door with the up-down arrows (not the Garage Open) one.

This is the kind of thing that my brain just churns on, trying to figure out a solution forever. As a matter of fact, my fiancee had to tell me last night "It's 1am, go to sleep and worry about it in the morning."

These are available from VW:

Why not just modify a set of blade connectors? The only other thing I could think of would involve notching the duct and re sealing it with duct tape. Not exactly the best approach.

That sucks.

Can you shave the back of the connector ?

When my air ride was installed, we had to ditch that A/C duct. Fortunately, that made my front vents powerful enough to keep the whole wagon cold.

Can't you grab power for the led elsewhere or without using the pigtail adapter? If I understand you correctly, it's the black connecter at the end of the pigtail on the new switch that is now making your ESP off switch to tall, right? Did they supply a wiring diagram for the switch? Do you know for certain that all the pigtail does is provide power to the switch led? If so I think you just need to splice into a wire that will provide that the power source without using the pigtail. Might need a service manual to find the right wire on the car, but I would think that it is coming in with the wire that plug in the ESP off switch.

What type of garage door opener do you have that uses a 12v battery?? You sure it's not a 9v?


Oh I see some use a 23A

http://www.sparesmaster.co.uk/__myAssets/Remote_Handset_Batteries%5CGP-23A_12V-LR.jpg

These should be similar to what vw offers as the real functional buttons to the euro buyers. If we could con one into cracking his console so we sould get a peek at how all 5 are wired...maybe ask this over at vortex?

My apologies for not posting any updates. I have been slammed busy with "life" so I haven't had a chance to dig into it again.

Rick, I plan on tapping power from the ESP button, but I need to know which wires to use. Does anyone have a Bentley and could possibly point me in the right direction? I could also use a multi-meter and turn the lights on and see which pins are active.

Luv_My_TDI, my door opener uses an A23 battery, so no worries about the 12 volts there. But it's most likely only a 1.5 amp circuit, and when we tapped hooked in a 5amp fuse, it blew pretty quickly. Need to figure that one out.

sjjaskow, That's a good idea. I have been wondering about how VW adds the additional buttons for the Euro guys. They might run seperate wires for each switch, rather than daisy chaining them together like I'm trying to do.

Thanks for the sugestions, I wil post more info when I get back to work on it (although, looks like Saturday night at the earliest).

If nobody gets it done before I get home, I'll check my Bently for you...

Thanks ToeBall. I'm trying not to purchase the Bently for the A5 platform cars and waiting until they release the A6 one. But it's time like this that make me wish I had it. The user's manual is completly usless.

It looks like green's your wire.

violet/blue, black/blue, violet/green are all wired to the actual switch,
green and brown are wired to the diode, with brown running to ground connection 7 in the main harness.

Hope that helps.

Yes, it sure does. Thanks again!

Can you post a pic of the finished product? Will the button illuminate?

Will do, and I hope to have the button light up.

Teaser shot:


More pictures and instructions to follow Monday afternoon.

numl0ck said:

Teaser shot:


More pictures and instructions to follow Monday afternoon.

Click to expand...

Can't wait.

How hard was it to get the inside the console? I have two garages and I think I want to do two switches. Can't see why it would not work. Better than remotes flopping around the car......

Here are some pictures of the button. As you can see, it's an actual VW part with a custom top, and it comes with the pigtail as shown in my first post:








Here's how we did it:

1. Open the center console by pulling up and pushing forward on the plastic behind the shifter:



2. Remove the two torx screws on either side of the console:




3. With the screws removed, it's probably easier to disconnect the power to the 12v outlet and the ESP button (this was a bit tougher to remove and required a very small screwdriver) and then remove the storage compartment completely.





4. Here's a shot of what it looks like soldered to the remote:
The black part near my finger goes into the bottom of the garage button, not to be confused with the other black male/female connector that was causing the problems listed in my first post.




5. We ended up cutting the male/female connector off and splicing into the wiring for the ESP button because the connector wouldn't fit correctly (as illustrated in post #1). Thanks to ToeBall who told me which wires to splice, except they weren't the correct ones (I have a Golf). As a matter of fact, I didn't have any of the wires he listed except the brown one.
Blue/white -> gray
Blue -> brown.

After some testing we figured out that the gray wire supplies the power when the lights are turned on, and the brown is still ground.



6. The button snaps in, plug in the connector to the bottom, and test it to make sure it works:





7. Put it all back together and here's the end result:





All in all, if you want an OEM button that opens your garage door, this is an excellent way to go. It's cleaner than the ComingHome visor and cheaper. I wanted to wire it into the car so I wouldn't have to swap out the battery in the remote once a year, but I decided to settle and not run the wires over the the fuse box (and risk frying another garage remote). Maybe I'll do that in the future...

sfpegasus, I would say that you can easily install two buttons, one for each remote. The remote is placed inside the console, resting between two frame screws. We looked for a mounting place, but there were none big enough without causing interference with the storage tray.

As you can see in the above photo (post #17) the illumination is right-on with the OEM ESP button. Also, range is not an issue. I can operate the door from 30ft away.

Thanks for following up on this thread! This is exactly what I'm gonna be doing this fall.

I'm glad to hear range isn't an issue.

Glad to see it was an easy fix after all.

I ended up picking up a Passat Homelink visor. I like this switch a lot, but I go a great deal on the visor and it's new. The cost of the switch and an opener would have been about the same I think.

But the quality of these switches looks worth it. Very nice. I especially like how the lighting matches.

I wonder what it cost to get them to do switches that aren't listed? I'm going to hardwire a V1 and I'd like to have an on/off switch in the circuit. A "radar" button would be cool.

is it powered all the time or did you use a switched source ( powered with key on only )

I don't think you have too much to worry about from a battery replacement perspective... our garage remotes are on their original batteries (silver oxide button cells) after 5 years and still going strong.

I was thinking from a security stand point, if you had to park the car outside for some reason you might want it on a switch ignition source.

GenMan said:

I was thinking from a security stand point, if you had to park the car outside for some reason you might want it on a switch ignition source.

Click to expand...

This was my thought as well even the factory homelink systems usually power down a few minutes after the key was removed. My garage is currently attached via a breezeway so security at the moment is not much of an issue but I plan to enclose that and double the size of my garage in the spring so it will be a concern then.

I checked the site for the remotes I have, little keychain genie remotes, and they claim the batteries are a 12v. Haven't had one on me all week to test but if this is true I plan to wire one to a timer circuit so it would stay active for say 5 minutes after the car is shut off and then no longer be active. If they are not actually 12V will just take a small circuit to drop the voltage down.

where did you hide the guts of the garage door opener??

I just ordered one btw! cool idea!

Brian

Even if you wanted to keep it battery powered you could still use a 12v relay to make it switched.

very similar to the TPMS reset button (for those switching to indirect system) you can add there as well, only down side to that one is running one lead to the ABS control module.

btcost said:

where did you hide the guts of the garage door opener??

I just ordered one btw! cool idea!

Brian

Click to expand...

Thanks!

The remote is attached with velcro to the air duct for the rear sets under the console. It stops it from moving/rattling while driving.

I see the points about security, and honestly it never crossed my mind. Then again, the standard door to my garage is never locked anyway so I don't worry about the car too much either.