Installation of a Mk7 Multi-Function steering wheel + paddles into a Mk6

[marcrae19]

So weird. Definitely more than one way to skin a cat. When i spoke with Matt from vagnostics earlier this year, he said he can get everything working but the cruise control!

Keen to see how you get on Tigger. If it goes tits up I'm happy to contribute to the cost of a replacement harness.

[YellowLemon]

If it goes tits up I'm happy to contribute to the cost of a replacement harness.

I think he's gonna hack up only the mk7 harness so if it doesn't work out he won't need that harness anyway

In fact now that I think about it, couldn't you just add the paddles onto your existing mk6 style wheel? IIRC you can buy them on EBay for seventy bucks and they plug into the little black box in the mk6 wheel. (But you miss out on the nice leather GTI look wheel)

[marcrae19]

Yeah the wheel is what i want, the paddles would be nice, not the other way round!

[tigger73]

Well I've rewired the harness but I'm going to wait until the morning to put it in the car (it's killing me to wait too). I need to pull the battery and want to test the horn and paddles which I can't do very easily tonight.

I'd actually be devastated if I couldn't get the paddles going - this was one of the main reasons I got the wheel. I'd even consider putting the wiring back the other way just so I can get paddle shift working. Though not being able to shift off pages in the MFD is also pretty annoying.

Will have to wait and see... will post up the results and DIY if it works.

[marcrae19]

So Matt from vagnostics came back last night to say they have fitted one in a T5 like mine but the illumination won't work. That's the same problem as Sean1987 was having but that's the best so far. I have asked him how and will see what he says. Hoping you have some luck today !

[tigger73]

After doing the wiring changes to make my mk7 harness into a mk6 there's good news and bad news. The good news is that my paddle shifters still work but the bad news is there's no change to how the buttons work

That is apart from one wierd thing is that the cruise on/off button now operates the horn!

Horn operates as normal too so at least I haven't gone backwards.

The other good thing to come out of it is I am now getting the time down to remove the airbag/undo the clips. First time took me half an hour and can now do it in a couple of minutes. Plus I've worked out how to get the wiring pins out of the connectors so any wiring changes should be pretty painless going forwards.

Still wondering if that extra earth lead shouldn't go somewhere and whether this is the cause of my problems but somehow I doubt it.

Any suggestions YellowLemon?


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[jamesatfish]

I know you're in SA but if you find yourself up Canberra way with the car I'd be happy to take a look. We've got some good CAN sniffing hardware and a control module that can interpret and modify CAN signals - probably like the adapter module posted above - that might help get this sorted.

My first approach would be to check out what CAN signals are actually being sent by the steering wheel module - if all buttons trigger a CAN message then it's just a matter of capturing the messages and resending the 'correct' Mk6 message instead.

If you don't see CAN messages for all buttons then it's a wiring issue between MFSW and controller - though with LIN being single wire if you're getting one button working then all should be working.

Failing that we do have a Mk7 multifunction wheel coming our way to look at this retrofit but not for another few weeks. I'll keep an eye on the thread and see if you get it working before then.

[tigger73]

Thanks for the offer James, however I'll probably keep a road trip to Canberra as a last resort. If you were local I'd be over in a flash!

Do you know what the pinout on the black/yellow connector is meant to be? If anyone has access to ETKA and can PM me the pinouts of the yellow/black connectors for mk6 and mk7 that would help to solve a lot of trial and error.

I'm almost certain that pin 7 is ground and pin 9 is 12V on the Yellow connector. I've had my mutimeter on the car and it certainly looks that pin 8 and 10 (and 11) are signals as they can be at different levels.

I don't really like doing it but I'm going to try swapping pin 8 and 10 and see if that fixes things. If not I'll just have to wait until someone comes up with the info and/or gets feedback from those that have got this working.

[tigger73]

Still no joy. Swapping pin 8 and 10 stopped my paddles from working and also the cruise button from sounding the horn. I've still got the same 3 buttons doing screwy functions and horn still works so I think I'm going to wait until I've got some more info before attempting anything else. I don't want to put power onto something that's not meant to and fry something.




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[marcrae19]

How frustrating Tigger. I say you wait as well.

@James - there is a chance i will be in Canberra next Sunday - maybe saturday afternoon/evening as well. How long would something like this take ? alternatively i could leave my MK7 MFSW wheel with you.

Not sure if tigger can wait that long though!