Hi all, new member here possibly buying a 2002 superb tommorrow and have to fit a towbar and electrics any help or advice more than welcome. are the electrics simple ,do they fit straight into the loom . Sorry if this comes more than once but as i say i am new and poosibly a bit slow

Welcome

Have a read of "How to cure the MKI Superb water ingress" and all the other threads on here covering the water ingress issues these ALL suffer from.

Then do yourself a huge favour and if the car shows any signs of water ingress past or present then walk away!! seriously.

They are a great car (well the AWX 1.9 PD130 is when coupled to a manual gearbox is) but will be a money sponge if they have water ingress issues, not to mention a PITA.

Fitting a towbar to a B5.5 is a piece of cake - all the mounting holes are already there. The back bumper skin has to come off and the crashbar needs to be removed - you may well find rusty bolts on an old car. The bumper skin is big and floppy - use an assistant and have somewhere to put it.

The wiring is also straightforward - pick up the relevant feeds by soldering leads to the metal busbars on the lighting units, then you don't have to chop into the loom. There is no direct wiring provision on this car. Use a buzzer in the boot for indicator sensing - enabling the "C2" lamp in the instrument panel is more trouble than it's worth. There is fortunately no multiplexed lighting wiring on the B5.5.

The Passat (saloon) towbar fits the Superb - I bought a Bosal unit on eBay which fits perfectly and works well. The diesel Superbs with a manual gearbox make good towcars.

rotodiesel.

+1

Parking sensors work just fine with towbar installed, though you might consider an off switch for the buzzer for when you're towing as sound can be annoying. Buzzer is on drivers side under rear parcel shelf, wiring goes to back of rear fender where parking sensor unit is.

When you remove the crash bar, remember to replace it's mounting bolts... Otherwise you leave small holes into the boot which will leak.

hi,

just an add-on question if I may. I have an 07 mk2 octavia and have read every post about towbars.

One-question - for a 7 pin trailor only connection - and with a bypass relay - do I need to route a

cable to the fuse-box for a positive supply ?

Thanks

K

I also have a single 12N 7 pin socket with a bypass relay. I just used the positive feed to the boot mounted cigarette lighter socket. Not sure if the Octavia has one of these or not?

I also have a single 12N 7 pin socket with a bypass relay. I just used the positive feed to the boot mounted cigarette lighter socket. Not sure if the Octavia has one of these or not?

Hi - no the Octavia doesn't have a boot 12v supply.

So, the relay does need a supply ? Hence the need to run a cable to the fuse-box

K

Hello

Yes it does need a 12v feed. You may be able to get a vehicle-specific wiring kit which plugs into the rear lights, but I'm not sure what the cost would be.

For the sake of an hour or two's work, I would be inclined to run the cable.

Good luck.

Hi - no the Octavia doesn't have a boot 12v supply.

So, the relay does need a supply ? Hence the need to run a cable to the fuse-box

K

There is a permanently live 12V supply available at the rear of the power socket in the boot. It's fused inaccessibly (thanks, VAG) at 10A and I used it to feed my trailer stoplamps via a 7.5A fuse.

I needed this supply as VAG stoplamp switches are notoriously unreliable, so the trailer stoplamps are fed from this supply via a relay in the boot.

rotodiesel.