80 Pin to 121 Pin

Hello everyone, I've been a TDI owner for 10+ years now, lurked this forum for a while and tried to learn everything I can so I don't ask stupid questions. My 1999.5 Golf is down right now, injection pump needs resealed and I'm doing a timing belt while I'm in there. She has been my commuter for a while and the 2001 has been the performance focus with a VNT17, PP520's, Malone Stage 4, PD150 intake, etc. Now that I'm driving the souped up Golf a lot more I realize how much I'd like to juice up the 1999.5. Also having two of them lets me work on one while the other is down, so right now is the perfect opportunity to tear into my .5.

With the backstory out of the way, I've read quite a few threads about people converting to OBDII programmable ECU and I'm still confused as to what exactly is required. The direction I'm leaning is to swap the entire harness and ECU from a donor car. My understanding is I will need the ECU, engine harness, body harness (at least parts of it) and the cluster. Some of the other modules are/aren't CANBUS enabled or capable. I read that some supported it and didn't use it, some don't support it and need swapped. What's the actual story? Am I missing something? Do I truly need to swap the entire body harness (basically disassemble the car) or is there somewhere I can draw the line without having a frankenharness?

When it comes to a donor, is there any reason other than the 4 wire glowplug system to go to a 2003? Is there some specific year you would have or avoid? I've read the 2003 has issues too but they can be fixed (like everything).

Thanks

I didn't had to replace the cluster when i swapped my 80pin to 121pin.

This thread really helped me a lot:

http://forums.tdiclub.com/showthread.php?t=459714

Specially the post:

http://forums.tdiclub.com/showpost.php?p=5071638&postcount=9.

But I didn't wire the t14a/8 and t14a/10 ...

k_pt,

Thanks for the reply. I definitely didn't give that thread a look but I'll be delving deeply into it now. I was under the impression you had to swap clusters because the newer ECU expected IMMO and the 1999.5 didn't have IMMO. I'm guessing you deleted that from the ECU for your swap?

Any thoughts as far as what year donor you would look at?

My 98 mk4 had immo, the 04 engine+ecu I swapped also had immo. I just paired the immo pin codes. You can also disable immo, immo won't avoid the car being stolen these days ...

immo won't avoid the car being stolen these days ...

I guess that's true if you're talking about an organized, funded, gang of car thieves, but please tell me how a tweeker can steal my car without the RFID chip that talks to my immo.

STDOUBT said:

immo won't avoid the car being stolen these days ...

I guess that's true if you're talking about an organized, funded, gang of car thieves, but please tell me how a tweeker can steal my car without the RFID chip that talks to my immo.

Click to expand...

I'll bring my laptop, my generic 409.1 cable, and disable it with a program that I may or may not have

well, this is how I feel about that!
But still, there'd have to be some premeditation going on there.
Utilizing a laptop and cable counts as funded and organized imo.
The typical PDX car thief would just pawn the laptop before learning how to steal cars with it.
Still, it sucks there's an exploit for immo...

If it makes you feel better, it took a LOT of researching to find said tools. Most thiefs I don't think would be interested in a 20ish year old car with 300k+ miles

STDOUBT said:

immo won't avoid the car being stolen these days ...

I guess that's true if you're talking about an organized, funded, gang of car thieves, but please tell me how a tweeker can steal my car without the RFID chip that talks to my immo.

Click to expand...

We are in different realities, here in Europe, believe me, it's a lot easier to get your tdi stolen.

Here a 1.9tdi car is worth easily above 4k €, even with more than 150kmiles and 20 years.