Hey Guys!

I got a small bit of a situation here with my head unit in my Skoda Rapid Spaceback (2017). I got a bigger OEM head unit for my car a few months back. The dealer is a good friend of mine so they deactivated the Component Protection for free tried to activate Smartlink as well, but unfortunately it ran into a problem: the "newer" head unit's VIN number is different than my car's VIN and Smartlink activation crashes every time due to that. Do you guys have any advice I can do? Many thanks in advance!

I’m assuming this is the later, facelift integrated head unit tech rather than a Swing-to-Amundsen or Columbus upgrade? If so, that post-dates my experience of replacing head units in a Rapid I’m afraid. But I do know a dealer should be able to recode a component to work with your car without issue, as even the facelift hardware doesn’t lock for life to a single VIN. The dealer’s ODIS system can recode that.

Head Unit looks like this but instead of sound its App and instead of mute its phone. I think its pre facelift because its 2017/2 and the facelift came a few months later.

That’s MIB2 facelift tech, so sadly not plug and play.

As my knowledge goes CP is connected to VIN so that means if you have old cars VIN on it its most likely that CP is not removed properly. If you have OBD11 or VCDS scan car and check if you get error on gateway or 5F unit(multimedia)(probably on both) about CP. In that case CP is not removed or disabled properly and could leed in the problem of activating smartlink and some other functions. The picture that you post is unit swing from facelift model and not all of those support smartlink(i think that one on picture doesn't support it) if you have app button and phone I think it should with activating of MIB FEC/SWaP code(for codes that your multimedia support can be checked). If screen is same size and design like on the picture not with some plastic edge around it its facelift unit.

I hope this help in any way.