I finally got around to fitting my towbar over the weekend. The time I had only allowed for fitting the electrics for now, but I expect that the mechanical work of fitting the towbar will be pretty quick.

 

I used the OE 13-pin electrical kit (p/n EEA800103EL, which comes with the 1K0 907 383 F controller). Fitting it was mostly straightforward, if time-consuming. There was the usual figuring out how to remove various pieces of trim for the first time. The control module and wiring harness dropped into place easily - the only really challenging part was the connections at the front of the car.

 

I spent probably half an hour trying to figure out how to remove the BCM before I eventually decided I could probably swap out the pins in the brown connector without dropping the BCM at all. The connector came apart easily and the swap of the pins was straightforward. The kit came with the required pins crimped onto the wires, along with a connector plug for the vehicle ones that were removed: no scotchloks needed

 

The fuse panel was more of a challenge, until I realised I needed to remove all the fuses and slide the pink bit up to unlock it for the new connectors (5 in total). Once I got that figured out it was plain sailing.

 

Coding was straightforward as per Ross-Tech's guide at http://wiki.ross-tech.com/wiki/index.php/Trailer_Hitch_Retrofitting_(1K)

 

The control module is fully accessible via VCDS, which exposes some useful coding options.

 

Contrary to a lot of descriptions for this kit on sales websites, it fully supports the 13-pin standard, including supply permanent and switched +12 V for caravans via pins 9 & 10. The coding on the control module allows for these to be configured so they only output voltage when a trailer is connected.

 

Output tests allow switching of all lights and voltage outputs on the trailer via VCDS.

 

Having plugged in a trailer to test I can confirm that the rear parking sensors are disabled and the trailer icon appears on the screen when the trailer is hooked up. I didn't test the alarm functionality yet.

 

All told, I'm pleased with this kit, it fits well and works well and integrates fully with the vehicle.

Pretty much my thoughts after fitted a Westfalia detachable with dedicated wiring to my Octavia Mk2 last year. The mechanical side of it was straight forward, fitting the 13 pin connector and routing to the boot to mount the module. The next stage from the module to the can bus and fuses is pretty simple but then it takes a turn. The fuse box connections weren't too bad although the key to fuse layout was comical in how inaccurate it was. The can bus connections were a pain, a lot of fine wires. Removing them from the connector to insert others was a challenge to my patience. Laying on your back in the drivers footwell, whilst messing about in a confined area with fat fingers and little wires is very testing. Anyone thinking of doing this who suffers with back problems I would advise against it.

 

The alarm function just sets off the alarm if the trailer is disconnected. Something I thought pretty useless but having watched an old Traffic Cops were they went to a service station because some travellers had stolen a caravan from someones car whilst parked up I guess would have helped.

Your fog light should also be disabled when connected to a trailer.   

The wiring work around the dash is somewhat challenging to one's patience alright. At least it was a fine sunny day and there was lots of tea for those moments when a break was needed. I don't know what the Westfalia kit was like, but the Skoda one just had 3 wires to be swapped from the brown BCM plug, and I'd experience with that type of pin connection from a cruise control retrofit on my old Passat so I knew what was going on.

Mine was fitted over two days on separate weekends in February so not as warm. In all honesty I was more worried about snapping the plastics fittings on the bumper due to the cold than my manual dexterity. The Westfalia kit is the same as the Skoda as they are the OEM manufacturer. From memory I think it was 5 wires in total to the can bus and two or three to the fuse box.

The difficulty was removing the wires and pin connections from the plugs. Having to release the locking tab so that you can ease the wire out then insert the new wire the correct way round so it would lock into place. Sounds easy to anyone reading this but then they are 1mm square connections in a very tightly packed plug and your doing all this upside down with your legs dangling out of the car and the neighbours dog sniffing your nuts whilst it's owner starts asking you stupid questions.

This kit was made by Hella rather than Westfalia.

 

The dumb questions from neighbours are great - almost as good as the stating-the-bloody-obvious comments "So you're changing your brake pads then?" No I'm summoning the f***ing Devil!

Only to be beaten by the neighbour who tells you they don't do any of the work on their car as they'be found a great garage who is really cheap. This you take with a pinch of salt as you can tell when they're going any where in the car by the blowing exhaust, squealing brakes and bag spanners under the bonnet. 

This same neighbour I've witnessed showing his son how to change the rear pads on his car. I got a little concerned with the sound of hammers being used. After asking if there was a problem to which they said no. I had an inkling they might be as I could still hear hammers and swearing a few hours later. Went outside to find his friend who works at Kwikfit also hitting the brake piston with a hammer and chisel. I had to point out that the pistons are screwed back into place not pushed. It was too late for one caliper as the piston was at angle and they must of damaged it. The other I was able to demonstrate using the right tool how it should be done. A week late they still hadn't fixed the damaged caliper and couldn't get either car out the drive so I took his son to the scrap yard to get a replacement, fit it, replace the pads and bleed the brakes. Yet he still wants to give me advice  

On 28-3-2017 at 16:25, chimaera said:

I used the OE 13-pin electrical kit (p/n EEA800103EL, which comes with the 1K0 907 383 F controller).

The fuse panel was more of a challenge, until I realised I needed to remove all the fuses and slide the pink bit up to unlock it for the new connectors (5 in total). Once I got that figured out it was plain sailing.

Contrary to a lot of descriptions for this kit on sales websites, it fully supports the 13-pin standard, including supply permanent and switched +12 V for caravans via pins 9 & 10.

Good job. A few remarks:

 

Regarding the fuse-box:

Removal of the fuses is not necessary, also with the fuses present you can unlock the pink bit and slide it upwards a few mm. Then you can install the wiring from the back side.

 

Regarding the power on pins 9 and 10.

When I installed mine 5 years ago, the part number EEA800103EL didn't exist yet. The available type was EEA800003EL, which definitely did not have a switched power on pin 9 (only continuous on pin 10 was present), so I had to add wiring for that myself, requiring me to completely cut away the supplied socket and replace it by a new one (Hella 8JB 005 949-001), because the supplied socket had no screws or removable wires. My controller is exactly the same as yours though, only the wiring seems to be different.

 

Did you also test TSA (Trailer Stability Assist)? You can check whether this is activated if you switch on the ignition. Normally, with no trailer attached or when TSA is not active, the ESP and ABS lights switch off simultaneously. If TSA is activated and you have a trailer connected to the car, the ESP light switches of 2 seconds after the ABS light.

Edited 30 March, 20179 yr by andrehj

On 30/03/2017 at 20:04, andrehj said:

Regarding the power on pins 9 and 10.

When I installed mine 5 years ago, the part number EEA800103EL didn't exist yet. The available type was EEA800003EL, which definitely did not have a switched power on pin 9 (only continuous on pin 10 was present), so I had to add wiring for that myself, requiring me to completely cut away the supplied socket and replace it by a new one (Hella 8JB 005 949-001), because the supplied socket had no screws or removable wires. My controller is exactly the same as yours though, only the wiring seems to be different.

My Westfalia kit I fitted last year was like this.

 

It did come with the optional package though which included a relay and a wire with fuse that connects directly to the battery and not the fuse box according to the instructions. At present I have no need for it though so just ran it to the front of the car and tidied it up behind the glove box.

 

Hi all from Finland!

 

I just installed the oem towbar kit and I am having a little problem with the coding, but first little about the install for your info to make sure I had not missed anything or messed up. Car is 2011 Skoda Superb Combi 2.0 Tdi 4x4 with dsg and 140 ponies under the bonnet.

 

I had my doubts on the wiring as I did not receive the three way splitting wire for the fusebox so had to make one myself and do a temporary install to be able to test my install. I also had to spline into the three CAN wires (orange with green strip, orange with brown strip and black with red strip) on the BCM brown plug pins 15 (green strip), 16 (brown strip) and 17 (black with red strip). The oem kit with hella box only has 7 wires coming to front so had to spline the CAN wires in, as behind the car and back was not possible like in the westfalia kit.

 

My problem is that I cannot fully code the car to understand that it has a tow bar. In Engine-01 it says code accepted for "trailer installed" but it doesn't change anything after all. At the parking aid-10 it doesn't accept code and says an error or accept the code but doesn't change anything aftel all.

 

So far I have updated CAN listing with trailer-69 and it can be found at the main menu, but I have nothing on the box to code as vcds says that it doesn't have anything to code. (On long coding it shows boxes with ticks on in but not any text what they are.)

 

My ABS is the MK60EC1 so no need to do anything there.

 

I have tested the electronics and they work fine on the trailer, even the rear fog works the right way. Only problem I am having, which is rather annoying, is that the rear parking aids don't regonize that the trailer is attached so it keep singing it's peoples song. (I can press the button to mute it but I'd rather have ot working the rightway as it should.)

 

Any ides what could be wrong?

 

Thanks

Janne K

 

If you had to cut and splice wires then you did not have an OE wiring harness. All of the wires in the OE kit are terminated with the correct pin terminals to slot into the required fuse positions and connectors.

 

If it's a 13-pin socket, you should have 5 wires going into the fuse panel (8 [5 A], 9 [10 A], 43 [15 A], 44 [20 A], 45 [15 A]),  2 CAN wires (or/gn, or/br) and one wire for the brake pedal switch (sw/ro), plus a little blue connector hanging off. You're supposed to remove pins 15 (or/gn), 16 (or/br) & 17 (sw/ro) from the brown BCM connector and assemble those into a blue plug which then connects to the blue socket hanging off the towing harness. The equivalent wires on the end of the towing harness then slot into pins 15, 16 & 17 on the brown BCM connector. If you've spliced into these in parallel that may be the source of your problems. I've attached the relevant page from the install manual below.

 

To me it sounds like you got a second hand kit with the towing harness cut off at the dashboard end instead of being carefully removed intact and you're running into problems getting it properly hooked up to the vehicle because bits of it are missing or damaged. I'd suggest removing whatever you have installed and return it to whoever sold it to you. If they sold it to you as a new kit, then you deserve your money back because they've conned you. If it's a used kit, you've found out why used parts can be a bad idea and catch out the unwary.

Edited 24 June, 20197 yr by chimaera
Added image

8 hours ago, chimaera said:

If you had to cut and splice wires then you did not have an OE wiring harness. All of the wires in the OE kit are terminated with the correct pin terminals to slot into the required fuse positions and connectors.

 

If it's a 13-pin socket, you should have 5 wires going into the fuse panel (8 [5 A], 9 [10 A], 43 [15 A], 44 [20 A], 45 [15 A]),  2 CAN wires (or/gn, or/br) and one wire for the brake pedal switch (sw/ro), plus a little blue connector hanging off. You're supposed to remove pins 15 (or/gn), 16 (or/br) & 17 (sw/ro) from the brown BCM connector and assemble those into a blue plug which then connects to the blue socket hanging off the towing harness. The equivalent wires on the end of the towing harness then slot into pins 15, 16 & 17 on the brown BCM connector. If you've spliced into these in parallel that may be the source of your problems. I've attached the relevant page from the install manual below.

 

To me it sounds like you got a second hand kit with the towing harness cut off at the dashboard end instead of being carefully removed intact and you're running into problems getting it properly hooked up to the vehicle because bits of it are missing or damaged. I'd suggest removing whatever you have installed and return it to whoever sold it to you. If they sold it to you as a new kit, then you deserve your money back because they've conned you. If it's a used kit, you've found out why used parts can be a bad idea and catch out the unwary.

 

Hi and thanks for the reply.

 

I ordered the kit from skodateile.cz and the bloke who I was in contact was Alan, so it should be a new OEM towbar kit. Everything on the kit itself looked oem and brandnew, except the package in which it came as it wasn't the original package and was taped together. The towbar electronic box itself is made by Hella and it's a 13-pin layout.

 

On my wiring kit I am missing the plug #K and it's wiring, so my only option and instruction from the seller was to run the CAN paraller (aka. splice in to the wires on the brown BCM plug). Also I didn't receive the wiring #J so I had to make one myself, which of course don't fit my fusebox as I don't have the corrent terminals, so the wirings are dangling inside the dashboard at the moment (well taped obviously).

 

Just realized that I only have 4 wires going to the fusebox, 3 big one to fuses 43-45 and one small one (maybe the SC8 as I don't remember it's strip color but know that it wasn't red). The big ones are always on power and the small ones are switched powers, right? My only consern at the moment is, that what is that one small which I am missing for?

 

I have contacted now the seller to ask has he send a wrong wiring kit to me.

 

And if somebody wonders why I used the wiring  anyway as I realised it's not fitting corretly, answer is I had my car torn apart on a Sunday evening and have to drive the car to work on Monday morning so was trying to get it sorted and car moving again .

 

Thanks

Janne

 

 

Just watched some guys youtube video on how to install oem towbar, and on it's wiring diagram with OEM kit, it also only had 4 wires going to the fusebox, but it had the small blue connector which I am missing.

You got a damaged/incomplete kit. Demand a refund or correct replacement.

12 minutes ago, chimaera said:

You got a damaged/incomplete kit. Demand a refund or correct replacement.

Greatly appriciate this info. Will do that as this kit was not any cheaper than Westfalia kit, but opted for the OEM, as it should be OEM and not "like the OEM".

53 minutes ago, IhmeJanneFIN said:

Greatly appriciate this info. Will do that as this kit was not any cheaper than Westfalia kit, but opted for the OEM, as it should be OEM and not "like the OEM".

I'd stick with the OEM but just make sure you get one that is actually complete. The main benefit over the Westfalia is that the control module can be accessed through VCDS for faults and coding - you can do things like turn off the trailer power supply pins if the trailer is not connected. Otherwise from what I've read around here the Westfalia one is identical. VAG/Skoda p/n EEA800103EL is the one I fitted.

Edited 25 June, 20197 yr by chimaera

1 hour ago, chimaera said:

I'd stick with the OEM but just make sure you get one that is actually complete. The main benefit over the Westfalia is that the control module can be accessed through VCDS for faults and coding - you can do things like turn off the trailer power supply pins if the trailer is not connected. Otherwise from what I've read around here the Westfalia one is identical. VAG/Skoda p/n EEA800103EL is the one I fitted.

Seller says I am first with problems with the kit. If you have extra time, could you take a screenshot of the long coding window from your trailer module, as I can enter the module, but it doesn't show me any text on it that what different ticked/non-ticked boxes mean. I would just make clear that the box itself is coded correctly.

2 minutes ago, IhmeJanneFIN said:

Seller says I am first with problems with the kit.

 

Don't they all! They've been learning from Skoda it seems.

I bought my Westfalia kit from PF Jones, I specified the OEM one and it came with the correct trailer ecu and wiring, opted for the 13 pin plug with additional charge/fridge loom. Coded in fine all functions working like PDC and fog disconnect, turn on and off depending if plug connected or not.

Edited 26 June, 20197 yr by 3T51704x4

Ordered westfalia kit for my superb combi 2014, it doesnt have OEM control module but rather trail-tec 30-01 led module. In wiring it has 3 wires for canbus and only 1 wire for fusebox? Will this work? Box says its combatible for multiple vag cars including Skoda superb combi 10-> and instructions shows just that connect this one wire to fusebox and add 15a fuse which is included also in package.

 

edit. installing 7 pin set.

Edited 1 October, 20196 yr by silma
correction

also skoda dealer suggested oem wiring is EEA800003EL is EEA800103EL for right hand drive? can it be used in left hand drive card? someone is selling it cheap in ireland at ebay.. in here it costs 275 euros which is too much..

3 hours ago, silma said:

Ordered westfalia kit for my superb combi 2014, it doesnt have OEM control module but rather trail-tec 30-01 led module. In wiring it has 3 wires for canbus and only 1 wire for fusebox? Will this work? Box says its combatible for multiple vag cars including Skoda superb combi 10-> and instructions shows just that connect this one wire to fusebox and add 15a fuse which is included also in package.

 

edit. installing 7 pin set.

That sounds right for a 7-pin setup. 2 of the 3 wires connecting to the BCM are for CANBUS, the third is for the brake pedal switch. The line from the fusebox supplies power to the module so it can power the lights on the trailer. The control module handles switching of the lights on the trailer based on signals it receives from the BCM via CANBUS.

 

1 hour ago, silma said:

also skoda dealer suggested oem wiring is EEA800003EL is EEA800103EL for right hand drive? can it be used in left hand drive card? someone is selling it cheap in ireland at ebay.. in here it costs 275 euros which is too much..

As per https://eshop.skoda-auto.com/cz/en/b2c/tow-bar-for-superb-ii-3t0092155ax EEA 800 003 EL is for LHD, and EEA 800 103 E is for RHD. Both are for the superior 13-pin setup. €275 is good value for that kit.

22 hours ago, chimaera said:

That sounds right for a 7-pin setup. 2 of the 3 wires connecting to the BCM are for CANBUS, the third is for the brake pedal switch. The line from the fusebox supplies power to the module so it can power the lights on the trailer. The control module handles switching of the lights on the trailer based on signals it receives from the BCM via CANBUS.

 

As per https://eshop.skoda-auto.com/cz/en/b2c/tow-bar-for-superb-ii-3t0092155ax EEA 800 003 EL is for LHD, and EEA 800 103 E is for RHD. Both are for the superior 13-pin setup. €275 is good value for that kit.

Installed towbar and wiring yesterday now i just need to connect canbus and fusebox wire. Manual says i have to Find free slot which has constant power and attach fuse and wire to that. Does one of 43,44,45 slots work which are used with OEM wiring also.

 

thanks for the help!

 

well there is no rail/metal showing in those ports so there is no power in those.. 41 has power Connected and fusebox diagram shows unassigned also sunroof is free is that constant live? 

Edited 2 October, 20196 yr by silma

3 hours ago, silma said:

Installed towbar and wiring yesterday now i just need to connect canbus and fusebox wire. Manual says i have to Find free slot which has constant power and attach fuse and wire to that. Does one of 43,44,45 slots work which are used with OEM wiring also.

 

thanks for the help!

 

well there is no rail/metal showing in those ports so there is no power in those.. 41 has power Connected and fusebox diagram shows unassigned also sunroof is free is that constant live? 

The OE 13-pin kit uses 8 & 9 to power the control module, and 43, 44, & 45 to supply power to the 'caravan' power supplies, and comes with the additional wiring needed on the back of the fuse panel to make them live. Offhand I can't remember which pins need to be connected to each other on the back of the fuse panel to enable these but IIRC the details have been posted elsewhere on the forum if you do a search.

 

You will also need VCDS when you're done in order to code the CAN gateway and engine ECU to indicate that there's a trailer module now connected. You will get errors otherwise. http://wiki.ross-tech.com/wiki/index.php/Trailer_Hitch_Retrofitting_(5N)

Well i used sunroof slot in fusebox because it had constant power and i dont have sunroof.. wired canbus also and vcds coding went without errors. One thing i noticed in ross tech wiki was that iT says you need to code engine ecu something? All other tutorials say only parkin aid long coding and adding trailer to gateway list 

Oops, I thought I was in the Kodiaq forum

 

Post deleted.

 

Edited 7 October, 20196 yr by wokwon
Oops, I thought I was in the Kodiaq forum :D