Okay, so i've got hold of the interior light unit out of a Superb that fits in fine (albeit with a few structural changes to the interior of the unit, but hidden away), but for the life of me I CANNOT get the thing to work properly!! Had some advice from VRsCarl who's been VERY helpful ( ), but i'm starting to think that the sunroof model unit is wired differently to the non-sunroof one.

I wired it up as described, but although the cat-vision bit and the light illuminations work fine when the lights come on (except the illumination around the rotary sunroof switch, wierdly), the main interior lights in the unit don't work or work in very random ways, and i'm not gonna start putting the connectors in willy-nilly until it works just in case it causes some expensive damage!

Can't get the door open lighting to work at all, the reading lights sometimes work, sometimes don't, the main on light doesn't seem to work and when it does work, either all four bulbs are on at half strength or just the outside two reading lights come on,... you get the picture.

So does anyone know how to wire the SUNROOF model unit up to get it all working?? Although it's got a 6-pin connector on the unit, it's only got the normal 4 wires coming out of it, one of which goes to the headlight switch, meaning the other three must go to the three respective octy wires in some way, but I can't work out how.

Any ideas??

Panic over, worked out what was wrong... fuse!

Was a bit cheeky and spoke to the guys who sell the pre-made looms on ebay and they told me how to wire it, and for those struggling to find this out it is as below;

1 - Blue/Grey goes to headlight switch

2 - blank

3 - Position 1 on the Octavia connector (Brown/White on mine)

4 - Position 3 on the Octavia connector (Brown on mine, presumably the earth)

5 - Position 2 on the Octavia connector (Blue/Red on mine)

6 - blank

And the fuse is the little 7.5 amp tinker in position 15;

So, for anyone wanting to do this for a SUNROOF model, all you have to do is follow VRs Carl's great tutorial about how to get the original one out (http://briskoda.net/..._hl__cat vision), and either buy a premade loom or follow the above diagram (i just wanted all the correct coloured wires in mine cos that's how I am!), but as in the tutorial, the 6-pin connector WILL foul on the sunglasses holder so just decide how you want to overcome this. Personally, I hard wired the cwires to the pins so that I could disconnect it via the existing octavia connector and another single spade connector a few inches from the unit for the headlight wire if need be. The plastic housing for the 6-pin connector cuts really, really easily with a sharp stanley knife so i'd suggest don't use a saw based tool as it'll probably be messier and definitely won't be so neat as a stanley cos you can effectively 'shave' the plastic exactly how you want it.

Realistically there's only thing you have to do to get the Superb/W8 version to fit;

1. At the rear of the unit, just between the rotary control and the sunglasses holder, is a small wedge/lug that effectively pins the unit in, the octavia one you'll be taking out has the same. But there are two more lugs on the nearside/passenger side edge of the unit that do the same thing which aren't on the octavia one (the offside/driver's side has two metal springs instead). In the photo you should be able to see the circled lugs in both places.

2. Carefully cut the REAR lug to about the same length as the housing just below it. Do it bit by bit if you want, I just cut it to run flush with the casing and it worked fine. The photo below hopefully shows you the plane in to which i'm referring to with which you need to trim it.

(The reason for this is that the way it fits in is you have to offer up the nearside lugs into the roof hole first and then push the offside in so that the metal springs hold it in place: the rear lug stops you from getting it in... the Superb it comes out of doesn't have the sunglasses holder and it's just a big blank space whereas the octavia has a metal strip running across it which divides the light unit and the sunglasses holder. Hopefully, this can be seen in the above picture.)

3. Once you've wired it all in correctly, put the nearside side in first so that the lugs are inside the roof void, then put your hand just inside the hole for the sunglasses holder and 'manoeuvre' the tiny metal seperating strip and the now shortened rear lug so that they both pop into the roof void. Getting it back out for any reason is easy too, just take the sunglasses holder out first to give you loads of space to make things simpler.

4. Once in you should be able to carefully push the unit in fully so that the springs on the offside expand and keep the unit in with nothing more than pressure. No worries about misaligned screw-holes that was a bit of contention with the non-sunroof version of this mod.

5. Pop the sunglasses holder back in and away you go.

Couple of points:

*If you manage to get the unit WITH the Superb/W8 rotary switch still in as I did, it will work fine on your sunroof. The reason there are two black & red wires coming out of it to the connector at the front is because it lights up the little positional marker on the switch itself. If you don't want it, simply release the three retaining clips around the edge, pop it out and replace with your octavia one. If you don't have it, the octy one obviously slides straight in, just line up the plastic guide bits roughly in the right place. Connector for the control is the same for both.

*UPDATE: see below for what to do if the sunroof does not open & close properly with a new/different switch

*None of the pictures on this were taken from my car (my phone has a sh1te camera) so don't worry that yours doesn't look like them: that fusebox does NOT look like mine in terms of where some fuses are or their value, just handy for display purposes, and the roof pictures are from a Superb.

***If you desperately want to change the led colour, if you take the top cover off as described in Carl's tutorial when he took it off to spray it (mine's an L&K so pearl grey colour was identical to my octavia one, handily), you should see the black stalks with the leds in underneath. Use a solder sucker and un-solder the leds on the printed circuit board (PCB), release the two catches on either side of the leds on the PCB, remove the entire stalk, change over the LEDS then do it in reverse and resolder. Make sure you use the correct equivalent replacement leds, and remember, THEY DO HAVE A RIGHT AND WRONG WAY ROUND TO FIT THEM; the flat side/edge on the bulb will dictact which way they go in relation to the ones you've just taken off! Very important. ***

Edited 23 November, 201213 yr by blackspaven

Et voila, got round to finishing it off and happy now the connectors are hard-wired so I can disconnect it properly like an oem fit, and it all looks much tidier.

If anyone wants a hand or whatever on doing the same with theirs, feel free to give me a shout.

No use to me personally but if there was a Briskoda BAFTA for "How-To" write ups you'd get my vote! Cracking bit of work mate!

No use to me personally but if there was a Briskoda BAFTA for "How-To" write ups you'd get my vote! Cracking bit of work mate!

Cheers buddy.

I guess it'd work as well with a non-sunroof model; the theory's the same.

Carl's got a spare loom...

http://www.briskoda.net/forums/topic/229522-cat-vision-wiring-loom/

Got enough parts to make a spare loom myself now if anyone's interested? Not knocked up yet so can make it to whatever length/type is needed.

NOTE: IMPORTANT ISSUE IF YOU'RE GOING TO CHANGE THE ORIGINAL SUNROOF SWITCH TO THE LIT UP VERSION THAT COMES WITH YOUR CAT VISION UNIT!!

Okay, so here's the update: after playing around trying to fix an issue with lighting, I had to temporarily change the unit back to the old one for a few days. This caused my sunroof switch to not work as it should, but i've worked out how to fix the issue in one of two ways.

There is possibly an internal difference between the two types of switches which causes the unit to open the sunroof on different settings. If you simply switch the whole console over, you might find your sunroof won't work properly. I found that when I switched back to the original unit, on 'closed', the roof opened halfway back and stayed there, and I had to set it to 'tilt' to get it to shut properly, thus meaning I couldn't use tilt at all. Something similar happens when you install the SUPERB/W8 unit, but I thought it was a glitch before. NOW I know you possibly have to set it up differently.

There are two ways to fix this is as follows and works whichever way you're going, from new to old or whatever.

Method 1: The easy way

When the switch you want is in the unit, set it to the middle 'closed' position

Don't worry about where the sunroof actually sits, but get out the car, lock it and then hold the lock button down for a few seconds to get the 'full closure' setting to kick in. Don't know how it works, but this should reset everything so that the new switch works as it should.

Method 2: The slightly more fiddly way

This is if stage 1 hasn't worked, but still easy.

With the original switch in, make sure the sunroof is in it's fully shut position and turn off the ignition and/or take the keys out.

Once you've taken the sunglasses holder and light unit out, you'll be able to see the sunroof motor.

Remove the motor from the roof so the cog isn't on anything but ultimately leave it plugged into it's cable connector (whether you want to disconnect and reconnect whilst removing the motor is your choice).

Connect the prelacement switch you wish to install via it's cable connector.

Turn the ignition on so that the motor is working and turn it one way or the other just so the cog spins.

Set the switch to the 'closed' position.

Reinstall the motor.

Basically, the motor will spin back and forth without stopping all day long if it just had a feed; all you're doing is taking the cog which turns the metal sunroof cables out the system, resetting it so that it sits in the closed position properly as far as the new switch is concerned, and reintroducing it to the sunroof cables in a position which is relevant to that specific switch.

I used method one and now both switches somehow work exactly the same so I can put either in and it's all fine. It might just have been my switches, it might not, don't ask why they did it, they just do but now they are interchangable.

If you've done the rest of the work to get this mod, this bit is REALLY easy.

Edited 23 November, 201213 yr by blackspaven

Okay so after a bit of fiddling & soldering & re-soldering (and laziness on my part in getting round to doing it!), i've FINALLY managed to get the whole unit to work in it's entirity!

It might just be my unit (or the way I soldered it) but there's a possibility that you may need to unsolder two of the diodes to get the unit to work as it's possible that the way it's wired for the Superb/W8 needs them but it just messes up the power flow in an Octy. Anyhoo, if anyone is strugging with anything related to this unit or getting any part of their's to work, I reckon i'm the most knowledgeable person in the universe on this unit now, even down to parts you may need from Maplin!!

Good result. On mine I've got round to cutting away the 'cage' the connector sits in, but that's about it at the moment!

When I test fitted mine, all functions worked along with the downlighting, so that bit might be your soldering work

Re-reading this back now, and regarding post #9 specifically, the reason I was having issues in that post was because the earth solder wasn't great. A year or so after this was fitted, the Skoda garage did a service and checked an issue with the sunroof. They took the unit out and put it back in and it took me a while to realise what had happened as they'd accidentally knocked the earth wire loose and the same symptoms had reemerged of the reading lights acting all kooky.

 

Moral of the story, make sure your solder joints are sound!!