Picked up a nice 2015 Today….

[Steve140]

Not as easy to find nice used ones these days with a manual transmission. Anyway the car is in nice shape. Has pretty much everything I’d want except it doesn’t have cruise control!

My bare bones 25 year old 2000 GL TDI with crank windows has cruise! Kinda shocked. Is there any way to retrofit the factory cruise to this car without spending a ton of money and a lot of work?

 

[Cuzoe]

What car is this? Are you outside of the us? My base S has cruise, it's standard equipment.

 

[Steve140]

Yeah it’s a Canada car.

 

[super1]

Yeah it’s a Canada car.

Are you positive It doesn’t have cruise control?

 

[hskrdu]

Based on the steering wheel pics I've seen, I think even the S-equivalent model in Canada had cruise control. Was there a base model below the S (using the Canada trim levels)?

 

[Steve140]

My 2011 had the cruise control on the lefthand post with the turn signals. This car has no buttons on the steering wheel. Strange. Has heated seats and remote mirrors and all the other options. Never thought to look for it.

 

[super1]

My 2011 had the cruise control on the lefthand post with the turn signals. This car has no buttons on the steering wheel. Strange. Has heated seats and remote mirrors and all the other options. Never thought to look for it.

Can you send a picture of your steering wheel and your left-hand post?

 

[Lug_Nut]

Were the Golf "City" still available as a less content than "S" trim level option north of the 49th?
I recall the Canadian market mark 3 "city" was less accessorized / encumbered with features than the US 'base' (GL) versions. Did that continue into the mark 7?

 

[Steve140]

I’ll post some pics at the end of the week. Away at work…

 

[Cuzoe]

Cruise control is now a SWaP (software as a product) function so the enablement codes must be activated to add the function. Outside of NAR VW sold (maybe still sells) an activation kit that includes the MFSW buttons and the code used with factory online diagnostics to enable the feature and code everything.

Control can be via MFSW or with stalks, but you need the feature must be activated either way. Where you control it is just coding.

I suppose it's possible the feature is activated despite you not having buttons or a way to control it but it's not super likely.

 

[P2B]

Were the Golf "City" still available as a less content than "S" trim level option north of the 49th?
I recall the Canadian market mark 3 "city" was less accessorized / encumbered with features than the US 'base' (GL) versions. Did that continue into the mark 7?

No. The Canadian Golf City was a MK4.5 sold from 2007-2010. There was no MK3 City.

 

[Steve140]

Update here’s the car. Has every other option. AC. Heated seats Bluetooth etc etc. steering wheel is blank. Still hoping for cruise control. Car is stored currently for the winter.

 

[Lug_Nut]

My 2011 had the cruise control on the lefthand post with the turn signals.

Can you send a picture of your steering wheel and your left-hand post?

...still waiting for that picture ....

 

[greenthumb]

Wow, looks pretty clean! I've never seen a North American-spec MK7 without cruise. Looks more like something you would find in the EU/UK.

 

[Steve140]

...still waiting for that picture ....

I’ll get the 2011 photo soon!

 

[Lug_Nut]

I thought the request was for the 2015 left post/stalk.

 

[Nuje]

Update here’s the car. Has every other option.

You mean, has NO other options (besides AC and heated seats) .
That is one bare-bones stripped down car (or at least, the "naked" steering wheel certainly gives it that look.)

I've similarly never seen or heard of a Mk7 in Canada without cruise control, particularly (as you point out), it was standard equipment on the basest of the base-trim Mk4 Golf back a quarter-century ago.

Any chance it was in an accident and repaired with the cheapest possible steering wheel the repairer could find? And then they just coded out cruise control so you don't get errors....? (Just throwing out possibilities.)

Every spec sheet and press release for the 2015 Trendline (base trim), even for the bargain basement 3dr. Trendline 1.8TSI, either list cruise control as standard, or show the steering wheel that we're all familiar with.

My money is betting on someone having replaced that steering wheel.

 

[740GLE]

I remember a news article about VW releasing a bare bones sub S level to hit the absolute bottom to hit a price point, or maybe that was the jetta.

 

[Cuzoe]

VW sells (or at least sold) a Cruise Control retrofit kit outside of the states for the Mk7. It was not a standard option early on... 2013/14. But we didn't have the Mk7 over here until 2015 and I haven't seen one with the naked steering wheel .

I don't know if the retrofit kit was stalk control or MFSW though. It would have included the code for SWaP/FEC activation.

 

[Steve140]

You mean, has NO other options (besides AC and heated seats) .
That is one bare-bones stripped down car (or at least, the "naked" steering wheel certainly gives it that look.)

I've similarly never seen or heard of a Mk7 in Canada without cruise control, particularly (as you point out), it was standard equipment on the basest of the base-trim Mk4 Golf back a quarter-century ago.

Any chance it was in an accident and repaired with the cheapest possible steering wheel the repairer could find? And then they just coded out cruise control so you don't get errors....? (Just throwing out possibilities.)

Every spec sheet and press release for the 2015 Trendline (base trim), even for the bargain basement 3dr. Trendline 1.8TSI, either list cruise control as standard, or show the steering wheel that we're all familiar with.

My money is betting on someone having replaced that steering wheel.

It’s loaded to me. My 2000 GL Golf has crank windows. . As long as it has AC and Bluetooth I’m happy with it. My VW guy is going to dig into it more this spring. I have the car put away for the winter. Lots of complete steering wheels out there for sale. Best case scenario the plugs are there and I can pop on another one with all the buttons.

 

[Cuzoe]

Plugs will be there for MFSW buttons, it connects to the clock spring harness.
Real question will be whether the wire from clock spring to ECU is present.

 

[740GLE]

Plugs will be there for MFSW buttons, it connects to the clock spring harness.
Real question will be whether the wire from clock spring to ECU is present.

The BCM right? The BCM then talks to the rest of the canbus and ECU.

 

[Cuzoe]

The BCM right? The BCM then talks to the rest of the canbus and ECU.

The BCM is on the canbus, but it's not involved in cruise control. The gateway is the canbus master so better to consider that everything talks through the gateway.

Steering wheel module (clock spring) talks to the gateway for the other MFSW functions.
But for cruise control there also needs to be a direct wire from the clock spring to the engine ECU.

 

[740GLE]

Thanks for the info, sometimes i think its easy and straigth forward, and then its not. lol.

 

[Cuzoe]

No problem... the BCM could be considered the dumbest of the modules. It's largely a relay box, inputs and (very fancy/capable) outputs. The gateway is more puppet master, and runs baseline (and un-lockable) software functions. Cruise Control, is one of those SWAP (Software as Product) functions. The gateway is coordinating it's minions (other modules) on what to do and when to do it, via can bus...

So much so that the later gateways (MQB-Evo platform, like the Mk8) add support for can-FD and ethernet due to the amount (and needed speed) of information sharing between the more capable modules in those cars. And accordingly there are even more functions locked behind SWAP functions in those cars, even functions that were not locked in our car's generation. I guess they call it progress.