Hello,

 

I've a 1.4 16v Fabia Mk1 Estate, bought recently. It has a central locking problem, which was know at point of purchase. I want to know more about the car and its the first VAG car I've owned.

 

I want to buy a dongle cable for the VCDS Lite software and Ross-Tech site only suggests if buying from ebay or amazon then buy one that's FTDI.  A couple of sellers I've seen, say the following "Please make sure your car is on the list and registered before 2004"  and go on to indicate my car isn't suitable if I go on date it was 1st registered. They mention their dongles are not CANBus compatible.

 

Now my Fabia is a 55plate registered January 2006, but as the car is often listed 1999-2007 for Mk1 production, I am confused.

 

I guess my questions are: 

Is my Fabia going to have communication protocols which are found in younger cars, despite it being from the 99-07 series. Or is my Fabia (built in early 2006) going to have the same VCDS cable requirements as a Fabia car built in 2002 or 2000 etc?

 

Is any mk1 Fabia the same, regardless of when it was 1st registered? will it be Canbus or something else?

Edited 16 September, 20187 yr by sheriff076
grammar edit

7 minutes ago, sheriff076 said:

Is any mk1 Fabia the same, regardless of when it was 1st registered

Yep.

 

You need an OBD II compliant USB cable with the FTDI chipset for VCDS to be happy, you install it as a virtual RS232 serial port then tell VCDS which COM port number it installed as.

21 hours ago, Wino said:

Yep.

 

Does this mean that my car is not Canbus, whenever I'm reading articles or adverts?

 

Many thanks fro the replies.

Your car does use CAN communication between some modules, but the diagnostics are also available on the so called K-line, which is what the simple/cheap leads use, I think.

The main thrust of my 'yep' was that anything that works for any Mk1 Fabia will work on any other mk1 Fabia, as far as I understand, irrespective of when it was made.

 

I use this one, from Gendan: https://www.gendan.co.uk/product_VAGUSB.html

Edited 17 September, 20187 yr by Wino