I am looking to get myself a vag.com lead and vcds, I want to do this as cheap as poss as it's not something I will use much. Can anyone give me advice on what to get and idea of costs, I have seen some leads for £15 and free downloads of vcds but cannot believe it can be this cheap.

No you need the proper lead, either micro can or hex-usb+can. The former is a bit cheaper and won't work on older cars. The latter is about £260. The cheap leads work with VCDS lite, which doesn't really work on recent cars like yours.

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As cheap as possible?

 

Contact someone with the genuine Ross-Tech interface (map of owners in my signature)

 

Why risk your car with a hacked copy of the software? likewise the VCDS lite software is limited in it’s capabilities.

Plus if you are using it on an O3 it MUST be version 12.12 (latest version at the moment) or it won't work.

 

£15 cables are using illegal copies of older versions of the software, some have been known to be riddled with trojans/viruses.

 

As said above, get the genuine article or ask a friendly VCDS owning Briskodian to help out.