Info required: Fitting a Tow Bar to a 64 plate Elegance Estate.

[yarnie68]

Has anyone self fitted a tow bar to a Superb Estate? Easy enough? I would prefer a removable ball and also wondered if there was much bumper cut out required?

[Kilkenny]

Yarnie

The bumper on the hatch does not need to be cut so I would assume the estate is similar,it does however have to be removed and the rear strengthining bar replaced with the tow bar.

[yarnie68]

Thanks 'Kilrenny'.

Do you know if it is straight forward? I'm not too bad with a spanner but at the same time I'm no engineer! I was hoping for a YouTube 'how to' video but not that lucky.

[Gizmo]

The rear bumper and crash bar are easy enough to remove, however if you want it to integrate with the car properly then you will need a fair bit of wiring loom (i believe you need to run part of it to the fusebox) and the car will certainly need coding (via VCDS)

[Joakim]

I installed a detachable towbar to my previous Superb Combi.

The mechanical part is pretty simple, the electrics are a bit more troublesome if you want a full system integration (CAN-bus). The electrics took me longer than the towbar to install.

I would recommend that you download installation instructions from towbar / wiring kit manufacturers and see for yourself what you have to do.

 

I had to make a small bumper cut out, but it wasn't visible unless you were lying down behind the car.

[HoneyMonster65]

Had mine fitted by dealer, but this is bumper cut they did if that helps.

[yarnie68]

Thanks All, I did pay for the preparation which is for the electrical prep so shouldn't be too bad. Glad to see the cut out isn't too big. Good advice and photos.

[HoneyMonster65]

The electrical prep does not include the battery charging and fridge circuit if you need those circuits. This was mentioned in the brochure by an asterix next to towbar prep so I didnt bother with prep and had full job done when car was delivered.

[yarnie68]

Thanks HoneyMonster. I will probably end up doing the same. It is strange that Skoda don't offer a full tow kit installation.

[psycholist]

It's happened to both me and a friend of mine (2014 Seat Leon) that when we got OEM towbars (No battery/fridge electrics) installed at the dealer's (About €750 is the dealer price I think - I didn't pay it as it was part of the deal in buying the car second hand), the rear parking sensors didn't turn off when a trailer was connected and the picture on the radio screen did not show a trailer behind the car outline. I went back asking about this since OEM fitting is supposed to work perfectly and have all features enabled, assuming it was a software setting. Turns out the tow bar preparation doesn't include the right control module to do this, so they had to take the car for 2.5 days, strip out chunks of the interior and rewire the car with a new €300 module. This was all done under warranty, so excellent work from the dealer - Sheehy motors Naas in Ireland. The reason I know the module is €300 on top of the towbar kit is because my friend with the Seat was asked for this much to do the same repair by the Seat garage. 

 

The main worry if the parking sensors don't turn off is that the ESP system also doesn't know there's a trailer, which may be a bit dangerous if the car does skid.

 

The mechanical fitting of a towbar is very simple - it does take time though, as the whole back end has to come off the car, but the electrics are a lot more difficult. On my last car I got a kit that plugged in to the rear lights and took lighting signals from there and fitted the lot in my friveway, but with the parking sensors and ESP, there's a lot more electrical/software work needed on the current cars.

Edited 1 December, 2014 by psycholist

[pleasure]

I fitted the thule removable bar and westfalia electrics.

 

Towbar pretty easy under 2 hours from what I remember. A fairly large peice removed from the bottom of the bumper to allow the electric socket to swing down when needed.

 

The electric took about half a day taking it easy. a few wires run to the fuse box on the drivers side dash all pretty straight forward to do using the instructions. I ran through to the battery on the near side & inthe passenger footwell is a LARGE loom that goes through a rubber bung - I was able to get the wire through this quite easily & up to the battery.

 

Lots of trim panels to remove in the car but again common sense & patience help :-)

 

I have VCDS so self coded the car in a couple of minutes.

 

Good luck :-)

Edited 3 December, 2014 by pleasure

[andrehj]

Why did you run the wires all the way to the battery? Isn't it much easier to use the four (!) fuse positions reserved for the tow bar electrics on the interior fuse box?

That's also what all the instructions I read for the S2 describe (and what I did myself when I fitted my tow bar).

[lowedb]

Why did you run the wires all the way to the battery? Isn't it much easier to use the four (!) fuse positions reserved for the tow bar electrics on the interior fuse box?

That's also what all the instructions I read for the S2 describe (and what I did myself when I fitted my tow bar).

Yes, I did that too. 

 

By co-incidence will be pulling them today, as the gasket on the tow socket has perished, and I need to replace it before it fills up with salty water.

[pleasure]

Why did you run the wires all the way to the battery? Isn't it much easier to use the four (!) fuse positions reserved for the tow bar electrics on the interior fuse box?

That's also what all the instructions I read for the S2 describe (and what I did myself when I fitted my tow bar).

 

It was just a single wire for the constant feed & fridge. All the others went to the fuse box.

 

Could just be generic instructions for the Westfalia add on kit? If I'd have known would have been easier to go to the fuse box with all of them :-)

[yarnie68]

Thanks All, As I'm ok with the mechanical side of it but not hot on electrics I have opted for the dealer install. Thanks for all the details and although I won't be doing the job hopefully others will make good use of your advice.

[woodysc1]

I have recently done mine and used a relay rather than linking into the canbus.

I took the boot trim all out so I could keep the spliced connections all in the dry and picked the power up from the aux (cigarette lighter) socket in the boot. Works a treat other than the parking sensors coming on obviously.

A couple more useful tips are that you may need some Hammerite paint. When I removed my crash bar to replace it with the towbar it exposed bare metal as it had obviously been fitted before painting.

I fitted a QV Witter detachable and the bar alone sets the parking sensors off so I wouldn't advise on a fixed towbar if you wanted to keep them functioning.

[woodysc1]

Btw my local fitting company wanted £60 to fit a supplied towbar. Even though I am a tight arse I would say it is definitely worth it. I found the bar £20 cheaper on the net so thought I was making a good saving however the universal relay kit required aditional wiring and terminals etc and I wish I didn't bother.