[frankmehta]

Congratulations Bro! May our worthy tribe increase! The before, after montage is awesome.

PS: Since our cars are cousins, we are brothers :-)

[Rajeevraj]

Congrats Gannu. It has been a great experience following your ownership thread. Wish you many more miles of happiness.

Nice collage

[graaja]

Congratulations Gannu, on the completion of 2 years. And 49K in two years is some running. I am a fan of your DYI series and hope to do at least a few of them on my Polo.

Wishing you tens of thousands of happy miles on your GT

[iliketurtles]

Congrats on the milestone gannu, long may the Polo continue to give you much joy. Your ownership is an inspiration to many on the forum, so more power to this thread!

P.s: loved the before and after bit!

[msiva75]

Congrats Gannu. I am regularly following your thread and it's awesome. My Polo TDI is also 2.1 years old (Sep 2013) and crossed 58278 kms!!!

How is Michelin Primacy 3STs? My Bridgestone TURANZA ER300 reaching 60K and may alive for another 5K. Really satisfied with that, but planning to try Michelin this time.

[Mohan Mathew A]

2 years and 49k kms is not bad at all. All the best for your future trips and waiting for more mods.

[Gannu_1]

Thanks guys!

Originally Posted by msiva75

How is Michelin Primacy 3STs?

From the 10k running that these tires have had so far, the comfort has improved and the road noise intrusion into the cabin has lessened compared to the stock Apollo Aceleres. This is clearly evident if you do a lot of highway drives (my daily driving involves 80 km of 4-laned roads and 25 km of single-laned roads). There was also some driving in the wet roads involved and I’ve had no complaints with the grip levels. The first 5000 km with these tires were also done in the roads and no-roads at Ladakh and they performed better than my expectations.

There are 2 major modifications in the pipeline:

a. Changing the stock BCM (086 H) with the highline one (087 T):

This is a straightforward one and involves physically swapping the BCM after disconnecting the negative terminal of the battery, copying the long code from the Central Electronics module in VCDS to the new one and adapting the keys.

b. Cruise control retrofit:

The BCM had to be changed because of this one and since my daily drive involves a lot of empty stretches on the 4-laned highway, I desperately need this feature. The only difficulty in this retrofit is to remove the ECU connector. The ECU is held in place using an anti-theft bracket-screw arrangement. The screw has a round head but it cannot be unscrewed as it is just a round head! I will have to get a slot cut on it using the Dremel and then remove it. Will have to remove the air filter housing to gain access to it. The rest is easy. Will have to remove the steering, swap the stalks, add the additional wires on the T41 connector, replace the stock slip ring with the stalks, connect a +12V line to the fuse box and finally the steering. This is going to be fun I reckon!

c. Mk7 steering retrofit:

I’ve had my eyes on the newer Mk7 flat-bottomed steering for a while now. I’ve got a Mexican dealer to customize one based on my needs. The steering will be installed when the stalks are replaced. The good thing is, there will be no issues with the backlighting (no need for the steering harness to be modified either) since the BCM will take care of it. And this is one of those easier plug-n-play retrofits. The only thing to be taken care of while replacing the steering is the alignment marks on the steering and the column shaft. Rest assured, all the 3 retrofits will get their respective DIY threads.

That would take care of the interiors. Next year, I’ll get the shocks replaced with Bilsteins. I am not looking at a remap considering this engine dishes out ample power taking care of my day-to-day requirements.

[BigBrad]

Gannu, congrats on the milestone. 49k in 2yrs is quite some running.

Your contribution to the forum (esp to the VAG community) through the many threads including this one is just FANTASTIC.

Wishing you many more happy miles with your GT.

[vinj14]

Hey gannu. I'm looking to retrofit auto dimming irvm for my creta. Mind sharing where you ended up connecting the 12v and the ground

[Gannu_1]

Originally Posted by vinj14

Hey gannu. I'm looking to retrofit auto dimming irvm for my creta. Mind sharing where you ended up connecting the 12v and the ground

I tapped it from the cabin light (check the pic of the cabin light posted here). It has been working fine so far without blowing up the cabin light's fuse.

The other alternative if you have an empty fuse slot in your fusebox is to buy a fuse tap cable and plug it on the empty slot.



And run the +12 V cable through the A-pillar towards the headliner. The ground can be connected to the body of the car (a nut/screw head).

[aneezan]

Congratulations Gannu on 2 years and 49K. This is by far the best Polo ownership thread I've seen. I can possibly get every answer here
I've just crossed about 1 year with 23k. Catching up.

Wish you many more miles.

[Gannu_1]

50,000 km up!



Exactly an year back on 19th October 2014, the odo was at 20001 km:



Nothing much to report otherwise.

• The new BCM is in transit and has been forwarded to Vadodara from New Delhi. I’ve taken screenshots of the individual Bytes under the Central Electronics’ Long Coding Helper window and the Adaptation window for the stock BCM in the meantime. India Post has never disappointed me so far. Hope they deliver the consignment on time!
  
  
• And the tire which had the puncture couple of weeks back, is doing fine - no air leakage observed.
  
  
• Also working on the bonnet-open indication to be indicated on the MFD's door-ajar warning. The hood-latch is missing the microswitch which is provided in the Jetta.

[keeru]

Originally Posted by Gannu_1

I tapped it from the cabin light (check the pic of the cabin light posted here). It has been working fine so far without blowing up the cabin light's fuse.

The other alternative if you have an empty fuse slot in your fusebox is to buy a fuse tap cable and plug it on the empty slot.

Gannu, do we need to manually turn the Auto Dimming IRVM Off every time after switching OFF the ignition for both the cases(routing through cabin light and routing through empty fuse box slot)??

[Gannu_1]

Originally Posted by keeru

Gannu, do we need to manually turn the Auto Dimming IRVM Off every time after switching OFF the ignition for both the cases(routing through cabin light or routing through empty fuse box slot)??

It turns off automatically if you have tapped the connections from the cabin light when the car is locked. Through the empty fuse slot, you may have to turn it off manually.

[Gannu_1]

Originally Posted by Gannu_1

There are 2 major modifications in the pipeline:

a. Changing the stock BCM (086 H) with the highline one (087 T)

Done and dusted!

The new BCM landed here last Friday and we swapped it yesterday:





I was incredibly lucky to find this specific one from Russia (of all the places!) and it was listed on eBay Germany (dealer ID: car_electronics, name: Konstantin Lunev). Contacted the seller and he was extremely helpful with my queries. I made the payment of 155 Euros over PayPal directly and he promptly shipped it on the day he had promised to, packing it in a compact box with plenty of bubble wraps. It was delivered in less than 14 days, zero customs duties charged (thank you India Post!).

The primary reason I had to upgrade the BCM was to enable cruise control support. Besides, for the newer steering units, only those BCMs flashed with the latest firmwares (> 2014 onwards) would enable backlighting for the buttons. Swapped it yesterday, did the required VCDS changes including keyfob adaptation and it was all over in less than an hour.

The BCM is located in a corner above the pedals and it’s a pain to access it. Almost broke my back trying to remove it (it wouldn’t budge from its slot!):



Also injured a nail in the process of removing it from the slot:



VCDS Autoscan shows 2 errors related to the parking lights:

Address 09: Cent. Elect. (J519) Labels: 6R0-937-08x-09.clb
Part No SW: 6R0 937 087 T HW: 6R0 937 087
Component: BCM PQ25 H+4 H40 0432
Revision: BF040001 Serial number: 0775 146150604
Coding: 3AB82BBF08A10000003800003C2B14900000414F6004000020 0000000000
Shop #: WSC 12345 123 12345
VCID: 4E9388B31922FE6E56F-801B

Subsystem 1 - Part No SW: 6R0 959 802 AL HW: 6R0 959 802 AL Labels: 6R0-959-802.CLB
Component: ------------- 006 5550
Coding: 010000

Subsystem 2 - Part No SW: 6R0 959 801 AH HW: 6R0 959 801 AH Labels: 6R0-959-801.CLB
Component: ------------- 006 5550
Coding: 010000

Subsystem 3 - Part No SW: 5K0 959 542 C HW: 5K0 959 542 C
Component: E221__MFL-TAS H31 0037
Coding: 020000

Subsystem 4 - Part No SW: 6R0 959 811 L HW: 6R0 959 811 L
Component: ------------- 006 5550
Coding: 020000

Subsystem 5 - Part No SW: 6R0 959 812 L HW: 6R0 959 812 L
Component: ------------- 006 5550
Coding: 020000

2 Faults Found:
03431 - Activation of Left Parking Light
011 - Open Circuit
Freeze Frame:
Fault Status: 01101011
Fault Priority: 2
Fault Frequency: 1
Reset counter: 0
Mileage: 50885 km
Time Indication: 0
Date: 2014.14.11
Time: 00:26:30

03432 - Activation of Right Parking Light
011 - Open Circuit
Freeze Frame:
Fault Status: 01101011
Fault Priority: 2
Fault Frequency: 1
Reset counter: 0
Mileage: 50885 km
Time Indication: 0
Date: 2014.14.11
Time: 00:26:30

That’s because the stock BCM did not have 2 pins - 40 and 41 under connector T73A:



Whereas those are present on the new BCM:



And those pins are designated as:

T73A 40 - Output signal on lamps, front right position lamp

T73A 41 - Output signal on lamps, front left position lamp

And further digging on the Russian forums revealed that these have to be connected to pins 13 and 14 of the headlight switch connector and removing the relay. Tried several permutations and combinations on the VCDS but the error won’t go off. Another point being the parking lights on my car are Philips LEDs. Will swap back to halogen bulbs and check but I doubt if the error would go. Will put up a DIY thread for the BCM replacement shortly covering everything that there is.

So the prerequisite for cruise control installation is done! Will take this up during the Diwali holidays.