Merlin Garage Door Remote Mod - B6 Passat R36

[snerlo]

Well,
Over the long weekend, I finally got around to completing (well 95% complete) the garage door remote mod which involves installing an OEM button in the dash. Firstly, was purchasing the button, which I managed to find quite cheap actually, on Ebay. Ended up getting it for $20!
The hard part in the whole setup was dealing with the merlin remote. Was a little bit of a pain to get open in the first place but eventually got there. Once open, they look like this

The hard part in this was soldering some wires to either side of the contact patch as they are not your normal button style remote. I'm not gonna lie, there was plenty of swear words said during this stage. Eventually got them stuck on!!

I ripped the conductive patch off the back of the green silicon cover and just to make sure, covered the soldered area with a layer of electrician tape. Bit of overkill but never can be too careful. When putting back together, it won't shut properly but I made a few holes for the wires to come out. I eventually just pushed it together and used some more electrician tape to hold it together.

Next hard part was getting the surrounds out around the gear lever. The immediate surround containing the leather boot just pops straight up. You can get a hold of it at the front if you pop open the cigarette door. Once out and lifted up, the next part I just had to take a guess at was the surround with the buttons in them. I eventually just grabbed the front on one side and lifted up and it popped out of the clips. There are clips at all four corners so you can get a trim removal tool in to the corner to pop it up if you like. Upon inspecting I then tried to pull the cigarette holder out, but after removing the two screws, the whole section with the cigarette lighter in it just lifts up but I was hoping to get in behind this but it is all sealed closed!! Bugger!
I eventually just tucked it up under the plastic facia right beside the seat between the plastic and the carpet. It was also just easy to feed the wires straight down using a piece of stiff wire. This will also allow easy access to change the batter when the need arises. Now I also added some extra wires to hook up to the circuit to get the LED to light up but I haven't done this just yet, hence the 95% complete. Install the wires in to the new button, and install the button in its rightful place after you remove the blank. Reverse the process to put back together but make sure you test before closing up!! Here are a few other pics of the process along the way, with the last pic being the final product. The button on the very bottom right is the new one. Looks OEM, feels OEM!! Will try and find a circuit in the fuse area at the end of the dash to get the light going as I wasn't game trying to splice into the light circuit of one of the buttons. Knowing my luck, I would bugger something up and end up at VW paying big biccies to get something fixed. Will take a lit up shot once I get a chance to find the right circuit.

[snerlo]

Final three photos! Enjoy!

[WazR36]

Final three photos! Enjoy!

nice!
been wanting to do this but the only place i could find the button they wanted almost AUD$100 for it including delivery
where on ebay did you get it or was it a one off second hand item?

EDIT: scrap that they are about $50 delivered from carstyle4you. maybe i should consider it?

[snerlo]

Here is the link to the button that I bought. Please make sure that this button fits your particular model as I think they changed throughout the B6 Passat model run.
Sunshade Push Button Switch FIT FOR VW Volkswagen Passat CC B6 3C0 959 563 A | eBay

[WazR36]

i see its a window shade button, looks similar though to this one:
CarStyle4you

at only $20 i might have to purchase one nice find!

[Passat R36]

Well done!

How did wire to the button ?

[kleung]

Please make sure that this button fits your particular model as I think they changed throughout the B6 Passat model run.

Thanks for the write-up. You've got me thinking now...I usually trigger the garage door from outside before I get in the car, but my opener is a Merlin as well, and I happen to have a spare keyring remote with a faulty 'main' button. No reason I couldn't program the secondary button to trigger the door though.

One question - why have you got wires soldered to both the primary and secondary remote buttons?

The button you linked to is likely to fit all of the B6 Passats. The B7 has a revised transmission selector/console layout though, and my 2010 R36 has the buttons in slightly different locations - the parking sensor button has moved to the lower left hand side, and the TPMS button has different graphics.

According to this page, pin 3 (third on the row with two unused pins) is LED+, and the one directly below that (pin 6) is LED-, if that helps at all:

1 No Pin	2 No Pin	3 LED+
4 Contact	5 Contact	6 LED-

V8Snerlo has connected wires directly to the PINs, but it's also possible, if potentially expensive, to do it with a proper connector as well.

Useful part numbers:
3C0 959 563 A - The sunshade switch
4D0 971 636 B - The matching connector for the sunshade switch (the last letter of the p/n determines the colour - B = red)
000 979 009 E - Wires with crimped connectors to go into the 4D0 971 636 connector housing

[Passat R36]

Bought the button! Nice find mate!

I was looking at the garage button from carstyle4you but I can't justify the cost of it. This is a great alternative and looks alright, it's genuine as well.

Thanks to kleung too, your post makes the wiring so easy! to get the LED in button working, just wire the LED pins to the same pins in the other buttons such as TPM button.

[snerlo]

Yeah, when you have the panel surround out you will see what I mean with regards to tapping wires. I really just wasn't game as I didn't know what wires to tap. It just wasn't worth the trouble so I will leave the car intact and find another method. I was going to try the cigarette lighter light but I realised that it actually wasn't working. If someone knows the makeup of the wires for the cigarette wires, then I will give that a crack. I might have a play with the multimeter over the weekend if I get a chance.
By the way, with regards to the plug that goes into the button, I went to jaycar to try and find one, but obviously they don't have anything like that so I bought the really tiny crimped connectors that go around the pins in the button. I then bought some small heat shrink tubing or whatever it is called (mental blank at the moment!!) and then made four individual wires. I made sure that the shrink tubing covered pretty much all of the connector as I didn't want to have any shorting out. Once I had these wires made it was a simple case of pushing them onto the wire pins and all done!! For the heat shrink tubing and the connectors, would have cost me about $6, plus I have a heap of the tubing left over!! I don't think you would have got a plug for that money, plus I couldn't find it, so I didn't bother!! Really easy though. I used the multimeter to work out which pins worked the button and the two remaining pins obviously would have had to have worked the LED, hopefully!!
By the way, I'm not sure that the pin assignment is correct in that post!! The pins are labelled on the button that I got and it turned out that pins 4 and 5 worked the button from memory. There is only two remaining pins and I really can't remember what pin assignments they were but it didn't really matter as it wasn't my greatest concern to have the LED working for the time being. I get accused of spending too much time with the car and not with the wife and 12 month old so I can only spend so much time doing these little mods. The four pins are in a shape of an "L". When you get the button, post a pic and I'll point them out if you need me to.

Kleung,
We still have the remote outside to open the door as we enter the garage but you still need one in the car and this was relatively easy mod once you know what you are doing. Hopefully I have made it a little easier. Like I said, the hardest part was actually soldering the wires onto the circuit panel as it is a little bit fiddly!!

[nermal]

Really cool mod! Makes me want to install a remote garage door.

Can the Merlin remote be ported to a different garage door if/when you move house (or sell the car)?