Superb III Sportline - Mission Impossible Spec

[ApertureS]

So this thread is going to be a bit of a hybrid! As well as outlining the projects I am doing on my car, Ill supply as much detail along the way for new projects to hopefully allow others to do the same and also to answer any questions you may have.

 

Lets start with the car itself;

 

 

 

Car

Skoda Superb MK3 TSI Sportline Estate in Laser White

Engine

Standard 2.0 TSI EA888 with 220bhp

Racingline air intake

Racingline turbo intake pipe

Racingline turbo intake elbow

Transmission

Standard 6 speed DSG DQ250

Suspension

Currently standard original

Brakes

Audi S3 Front Calipers with plain fascia plates

Superb 280 Rear Calipers with vented discs

Drilled and grooved black discs

OE brake pads

Braided stainless brake lines

Wheels & Tyres

Standard Vega 19 inch alloy wheels with 235/40R19 Bridgestone T005

Spare wheel - Full size, same as above

Exterior

Standard sportline black pack

Maxton side skirts

Rear mudflaps

Maxton splitter

Maxton fog surrounds

Interior

Rear seat release from boot area

LED boot lights

White LED boot torch

Electric tailgate

Heated front seats

Heated rear seats

Heated steering wheel

Ambient LED footwell lights

LED front door puddle lights

LED rear door puddle lights

Electric/Memory front seats

ICE & Security

Canton sound system

Rear door keyless entry

Tailgate easy open/close

12 parking sensors

MIB2.5 Columbus radio

Virtual cockpit

3 zone climate control

Heated windscreen

Heated washer jets

Front and rear dash cam

ADAS

Adaptive cruise control

Predictive cruise control

Adaptive lane assist

High beam assistance

SLA headlights

Side assist

Cross traffic assist

Self park

Rear view camera with lens washer

 

 

 

As you can see, for a Sportline that started off with only the following optional extras: Electric tailgate, MIB2.5. Its came quite a long way and heres a few photos to show the work done so far, if anyone wants further details on any of the current retrofits, let me know, the future ones will be documented as I go.

 

 

 

Lane Assist

3Q0980654 camera fitted as well as a new windscreen - all features enabled and fusion canbus ran to the front radar.

 

 

Heated windscreen

 

 

Canton soundsystem

An absolutly massive retrofit requiring around 150 meters of new wiring, all corners of the car, a lot of new speakers and a lot of custom made wiring

0

 

Side assist/Cross traffic detection

Another expensive retrofit requiring new wing mirror glass at £400 each side, new radars and brackets behind the rear bumper and all associated coding and wiring

 

 

Release rear seats from luggage area & Heated rear seat elements

 

3 Zone climate control

Another massive retrofit - stripping the entire dashboard from the car to replace the complete heater assembly to allow the 3rd climate zone, this also gave me a good chance to neaten everything up behind the dashboard and also flush the heater core.

 

pACC/Predictive cruise control

Required replacing the front radar and also a calibration of it - done perfectly with any solid smooth object and a few tape measures and patience.

 

Facelift tailights

Fitting these allowed for dynamic indicators and unlocking animation - these arent a straight fit and require custom wiring adapters and new wires running to the BCM

 

Virtual Cockpit

Quite a specialist retrofit this one, needs access to the main dealer tool for component protection and immobiliser recoding - but so worth it!

 

Carbon clean @ 50k miles

Not much a retrofit but after 50k of constant motorway miles i thought it would be a good time to give it a walnut blast. Cost around £40 in parts and my already owned air compressor and garage vacuum

 

LED boot lights and engine styling

Nothing too special, just a custom made LED torch, LED lights that dont fault and Racingline air intake and associated parts

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited 16 January by ApertureS

[ApertureS]

Canton speaker grills

Since doing the canton retrofit I wanted the matching speaker grills, but at £450 per door card and almost impossible to find the correct spec sportline door cards, I got creative and found some cream canton grills, dyed them black and fitted them perfectly to the door cards

 

Memory passenger seat

This seat started life completely manual, It is now fully electric and has the memory and easy entry features

 

 

Direct TPMS

Allows full view of pressures from the dashboard

 

Brake upgrade

280 rear brakes for the added vented discs

Audi S3 brakes for the front - very similar to 280 fronts but with the added face plate

 

 

Ambient light upgrades

As well as the standard LED lights in the doors I thought id add matching footwell lights, The front warning lights were upgraded to LED and the rears got the same matching lights.

 

Rear kessy

Adding rear kessy handles (exact same as front) was such a useful feature, but did require a fair few new wires

 

 

Electronic chidlock on rear doors

Only an option after 2018, I wanted it on my 2017, not too hard but does require new rear door modules

 

Heated steering wheel

Not the hardest retrofit but fairly expensive as cars before 2019 require a new airbag as the design is slightly different

 

 

These are all the photos I have of the current retrofits, The next part will be all the to come retrofits and a bit more detail as i go!

 

 

Edited 16 January by ApertureS

[naster]

I cannot recall seeing a more elaborate set of upgrades done by an owner! The sheer complexity of each operation is overwhelming let alone the labour that went into this… Hats down!

[J.R.]

I was more intrigued by the sneaking views of your Georgian (I think) house, nice to see that it is generally original and unmolested 👍

 

I bet the Superb would not pass through those garage doors, maybe a Morris 8 would!

[ApertureS]

1 hour ago, J.R. said:

I was more intrigued by the sneaking views of your Georgian (I think) house, nice to see that it is generally original and unmolested 👍

 

I bet the Superb would not pass through those garage doors, maybe a Morris 8 would!

The last car that I managed to fit in that garage was a 1986 VW Polo Coupe.... Granted it had no wheels and it was turned on its side!

[ApertureS]

This part of the thread is for whats up next, including photos, whats involved and a fair bit more

 

We are now moving into the wider territory (with some of the below) of very broad 'factory' retrofits and some of these youll see arent even options for the superb either for that model or that age.

 

Heated washer jets

Not a big retrofit and will probably make next to no difference, but this retrofit is as simple as 2 washer jet nozzles, 2 plugs, 4 terminals, a ground and a power wire to the BCM and only 1 adaptation change.

 

 

Heated steering wheel

I managed to source a steering wheel from sweden at a bargain price that matched the spec I wanted, After importing that and changing the airbag and clockspring assembly out, we then had to rewire the plug that goes into the clockspring, all well documented on other forums so no need to go into it too much. Most of the photos are above already but when the wiring is done, ill post more photos.

 

Ventilated front Sportline seats

Now this is where things start to get interesting, Ventilated seats were an option, but never ventilated sportline seats, and with the perforated fabric it looks perfect for the job. First it was near impossible to actually find a set of any ventilated seats for sale, let alone a set of stripped seats to see the internal workings. This means im working completely blind so i began doing some research to find out exactly how these work and what would be required. So the first part is the fan itself, you'd think these blow into the seat, but they actually suck out of the seat. 

So the fabric itself is perforated, below this is the heating element with all excess fabric removed, then the sponge has a lot of holes through it, below this is the spacer mesh which looks like a rigid spiders web, the last part is a sealed layer, the fan then pulls a vacuum through the entire seat.

This is controlled by a LIN channel to the BCM which is the easy part. The hard part will be modifying the seats. I now have all the required parts, now its just finding time to strip the seat down.

 

 

Door pocket ambient lights

Another fairly easy and straight forward retrofit, 4x lights 4K0919390A/B/E/F and 4x plugs 8K0973754, these simply link into the ambient door light strips and need a few adaptation changes to turn them on.

 

Wireless phone charger/booster

Most would call this a fairly pointless retrofit but my plan is to add the USB hub, fit wireless carplay to the centre console, then the front pocket will be free to charge my phone. Lots of people complain about overheating from inductive charging so a small idea I had was to T off the glovebox cold air feed, run a small 3mm silicone pipe to the back of the phonebox and connect it to a 180 degree irrigation nozzle to blow a very small amount of cold air into the cubby area. 

 

Now the actually charger and booster, although it looks fairly straightforward, the entire front cubby area gets changed, then a fakra cable is ran to the NSR corner of the car where the signal booster is, another fakra is then ran to the roof antenna which also needs changing. This all links into the infotainment system and the kessy system even.

 

 

USB Hub

The photos above and below show this quite well but this basically transforms your single front USB port into a USB port at the front, and in the centre glovebox - both Apple and android compatible too!

All thats needed is the USB hub and 2 low level USB ports (DONT use high spec ports) A very good guide is located here 

 

TV Tuner

Another fairly pointless retrofit, but having spent a lot of hours sitting in my car, the TV would be lovely! 

This is quite the retrofit and the process varies a fair bit between estate/hatchback.

The parts required are the tv tuner, 3 new antenna boosters, the trim panels and then the fun part of the wiring. Fakra cables need to be ran to both rear quarters and into the tailgate for all the new antennas, the new antennas dont always have wires to connect to the glass so this often needs to be soldered to the glass carefully! You also need a MOST cable but luckily I have the virtual cockpit so I can loop off of that.

 

 

Webasto Parking Heater

I wish I had this one ready for winter already, but sadly not - this would serve 2 purposes - the cold winter mornings going to work, and also when we sleep in the car on long road trips to keep it warm without the engine running.

The parts involved in this are: External fuel pump, Fuel lines to front of car, Webasto unit, A whole bunch of coolant pipes, Remote control module, Remote control and then a whole bunch of wiring and plugs running all across the car!

This allows you to either set a timer or use the fob remote to turn on the heater from a fair distance away! It also allows the ability to ventilate the car on very hot days to drop the internal temperature. (I even went to the added detail of ordering the 2 stickers that the car would have left the factory with.)

 

 

Dynamic Chassis Control (DCC)

With two of my shock absorbers leaking - the smart thing to do would be to replace them at £100 each. But no, I decided to spend a huge sum of money on brand new genuine DCC shock absorbers. This isnt an easy task and the wiring required is absolutely massive! 4x new arch looms, 2x level sensors, 3x accelerometers, 1x control unit and all the wiring to go with it. Not to mention custom datasets for a few modules. Custom twisted pairs were required for this to match all the factory wiring perfectly.

As you can see from the photos - A LOT OF WIRING

 

 

Areaview/Panoramic View/360

This one I think will ***** a lot of peoples ears up - Areaview was never an option for the pre facelift superb so a lot of parts dont fit, this means a fair bit of creativity is required.

4 cameras are added to the car, the rear camera is for 2019 onwards tailgates but luckily as I fitted the FL trim, I can fit the rear camera with no issues. 

The front camera on the facelift is in the grill, this is a problem on the pre-FL as we have a large radar there and it would interfere. After looking at how a lot of other cars do this, It seems that the pre-FL passat had theirs in the lower front grill, So with a bit of 3D modeling I am creating a bracket to secure the camera in the same place as a passat.

The next issue is the wing mirrors - a brand new mirror is £700 each side and there are no used parts available. So the next best thing, LHD versions. These are yet to turn up and i'm sure ill be bitten in the ass when the LHD cant be used in some way on RHD cars (I believe the unit sits at different angles) so may have to get creative.

Next is getting the HSD wires through the door into the car, many people just turn them into pins and use spare pin holes, but this isnt OE enough for me. So I purchased the correct door connectors and wiring from the FL which have a cut out for the HSD connector - these connectors are not standard so sadly I had no choice but to buy from Skoda. 

After I've made all the custom HSD cables and ran them into the car, next is where to mount the control unit, on the factory cars it is under the drivers seat (where my TV tuner lives) and even if not, it is only held in with a ugly piece of polystyrene, I plan to mount it under the TV tuner in a cut out, directly against the car body and held down by the TV tuner bracket. 

As more parts turn up, ill update this further.

 

 

 

Edited 16 January by ApertureS

[Jonboy984]

Amazing read so far, I have followed this thread and will look forward to updates.

[komoornik]

Good luck with the mods. Having fully loaded L&K I'm glad I already have almost all the things mentioned 😅

[J.R.]

Amazing and inspiring.

 

Having spent several hours again tinkering with my Chinese diesel heater that original Webasto unit looks really really well engineered and is worth a lot of money I would bet.

[numskull]

Said it once, but I’ll say it again; you are a complete, but also a quite amazing NUTTER AS!
 

Absolutely incredible jaw-dropping work, which no sane person would even think about attempting; quite brilliant - I applaud you! 👏🏻

[Danoid]

I have to ask, would it have been cheaper just to sell your car and get a new one fully loaded? 😁

[JR RS]

thanks for the write-up and sharing the amazing mission impossible work u've done to ur Superb!!!

 

the Area-360 has my attention, but the complexity of all is not something i'm keen on tackling myself, so i'll just leave that on my "ur dreaming" list.

i have however keen on how u go with the additional USB ports retrofit.  i've researched on this a few years back, and i think i have a good understanding - i just haven't prioritised this retrofit as its not critical.

if u do get around to doing it, i'd like to know the details, so i can then pull my finger out and actually do it.

 

good luck with the rest of the stuff.

[Donweather]

Amazing amount of work and love gone into your car. Keep up the good work. 
 

just a question. What rear discs are these?  And any reason why you didn’t put black discs on the fronts also?

 

I do like the look of the black. But I’m biased as I have a red Sportline with black rims. 

[ApertureS]

1 hour ago, Donweather said:

Amazing amount of work and love gone into your car. Keep up the good work. 
 

just a question. What rear discs are these?  And any reason why you didn’t put black discs on the fronts also?

 

I do like the look of the black. But I’m biased as I have a red Sportline with black rims. 

The black is just a coating and it wears off, they are mtec discs  

[ApertureS]

6 hours ago, Danoid said:

I have to ask, would it have been cheaper just to sell your car and get a new one fully loaded? 😁

At this point probably, but I’m well underway now!

 

the only thing I wish I started with was a sportline 280 estate with a sunroof - as retrofitting the pano roof and 4wd system is a pain in the ass (but not impossible)

[coppertop]

Waiting for the Webasto Parking Heater chapter, if you can sort this before the end of January it would be appreciated 😀

[ApertureS]

4 hours ago, coppertop said:

Waiting for the Webasto Parking Heater chapter, if you can sort this before the end of January it would be appreciated 😀

Wont be going in before January, gonna wait for the weather to warm slightly!

 

What questions did you have and I’ll do my best to answer them for you?

[coppertop]

1 hour ago, ApertureS said:

Wont be going in before January, gonna wait for the weather to warm slightly!

 

What questions did you have and I’ll do my best to answer them for you?

No questions in particular, just interested as I have always thought it would be an excellent addition to my car. Are you going to prepare a ‘How to” guide? Only issue is the cost!

[Danoid]

1 hour ago, ApertureS said:

Wont be going in before January, gonna wait for the weather to warm slightly!

 

What questions did you have and I’ll do my best to answer them for you?

Step by step for non competents like me would be amazing

[Bobodaclown]

Thank you for sharing, what a mad set of upgrades! Great reading this.

[ApertureS]

11 hours ago, coppertop said:

No questions in particular, just interested as I have always thought it would be an excellent addition to my car. Are you going to prepare a ‘How to” guide? Only issue is the cost!

 

11 hours ago, Danoid said:

Step by step for non competents like me would be amazing

I will do my best!

 

im sure people will want step by step guides for webasto, areaview and DCC.

 

Although for all 3 of these retrofits even with second hand parts, you’ll be spending £1000 or more on parts alone.

 

Not the lightest retrofit to carry out 😛 

[Warrior193]

It's a real pity that Skoda don't offer the Webasto auxiliary heater as an option in UK. I wanted one when I was ordering the Octavia, but was advised only available on Scandinavian orders. 😒

[ShaneCo]

That is some amazing amount of work, fair play 🙂 Of all the upgrades so far, are there any that aren’t worth it? And which are must haves if you change car? 

[ApertureS]

13 hours ago, ShaneCo said:

That is some amazing amount of work, fair play 🙂 Of all the upgrades so far, are there any that aren’t worth it? And which are must haves if you change car? 

I personally love the lane assist and adaptive cruise control.

 

i also really enjoy the canton sound system as I really like my music.

 

Electric tailgate with easy open comes in handy all the time when my hands are full too.

 

and the heated windscreen and seats is used so much in the winter! No need to scrape anything, just sit in the warm car.

Edited 20 January by ApertureS

[Paws4Thot]

2 hours ago, ApertureS said:

the heated windscreen and seats is used so much in the winter! No need to scrape anything, just sit in the warm car.

How does a heated windscreen clear side glasses?