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MK7 Climatronic upgrade with instructions and pictures.

Acadia18

Autocross Champion
Location
The Greater Boston Metropolitan Area
Car(s)
2019 Golf R
Guys, what functions will not work with the new climatronic?

Dual zone doesn't work, obviously. Since you don't have the ducting for it. You have to leave it on 'Sync'.

You can't have air blowing out of the vents along the windshield, and the footwell at the same time. That's the biggest drawback, as that was the main setting I'd use in the colder months. I've gotten use to just leaving it on 'Auto' though, which has done a reasonable enough job.
 

Acadia18

Autocross Champion
Location
The Greater Boston Metropolitan Area
Car(s)
2019 Golf R
They go from the back of the climatronic unit to the driver side vent, and driver side footwell vent. Read the link that was given a few posts up, it shows where they run to.
 

anotero

Autocross Champion
Location
Hither and thither
Car(s)
Mk7 GTI
Dual zone doesn't work, obviously. Since you don't have the ducting for it. You have to leave it on 'Sync'.

You can't have air blowing out of the vents along the windshield, and the footwell at the same time. That's the biggest drawback, as that was the main setting I'd use in the colder months. I've gotten use to just leaving it on 'Auto' though, which has done a reasonable enough job.

Thanks for reiterating.
 

Eliranfla

Passed Driver's Ed
Location
Crato - CE
I removed the lower right (on a RHD car) cubby, because I dropped one of the screws, if you need to do this, flip it down and push a screwdriver along the sides as you pull on it to release the stops at the side, it will simply pull off after this.
View attachment 189532View attachment 189531

The next part is probably the most tricky, the cable which is already attached to the new loom is for the RIGHT SIDE. Feed this down where the existing cables come from, then up through the back, I used one of the vent holes as the plug passes through here easily. Next feed a scrap wire or piece of string down from behind the cluster, until it appears down the back of the infotainment unit, it will take some fiddling but it will get there. Tape this to the plug and draw it up behind the dash, then feed the wire/string out through the right hand side and connect to the sensor. That's the Right hand side complete.

The left side is a little easier, look in from the left of the dashboard with the door open and you'll see a clear and straight path to where the light is coming in behind the infotainment unit. Take the thin wire for the left sensor and put a little tape round the 2x metal pins on the end of the wires. straighten this and feed it along towards the light until it pops out behind the infotainment unit, again feed it down behind where the existing wires come from and remove the tape (the tape just stops the pins splaying out and getting caught).

The 2 pins go into this connector, you'll see little numbers printed on this side, 1 to 20. We're looking for pins 13 and 17 which are on the right hand side in the picture.
View attachment 189529

You have to slide the connector out of the housing, do this by pulling the little tab shown next to my thumbnail and the wire block will slide out.
View attachment 189527

View attachment 189528

Insert the 2 pins until they click into the connector, reassemble the connector.
View attachment 189530

Plug in the 2 plugs on the adapter harness to the back of the new climatronic unit and then plug the single plug into the socket as shown.
View attachment 189526

Finally plug in the main plug on the right (no picture) and physically clip the climatronic and infotainment units back into place.

Turn on the engine and check that the unit powers up and that you can turn the fan speed up and down etc.

Run a 'Flap resync' which trains the new clima unit to the flap positions of your heater box, do this by pressing the AC and dash vents buttons symultaneously until their lights start flashing back and forward. You might hear the flaps moving etc and after a few seconds it should go back to normal.
View attachment 189533

Run an AC 'Run-in' (sync) cycle by pressing the AC and "Max Demist" buttons symultaneously until they start flasing. Again this may take a little while as the clima unit trains itself to the AC compressor.
View attachment 189534

After this everything* should work. Before runninng the AC sync, my AC wouldn't turn on, the light wouldn't light up and it wouldn't get cold. You can also run these from VAG-COM if you have it.

*The one caveat with this mod is that you don't get dual zone control, only 'Sync' with both zones at the same temp. This is because you're missing the flaps which direct air to the left and right of the car, but the main thing is the climatronic function works. If this bothers you then the only solution is to rip out the dash and fit the correct heater box and flaps. It doesn't bother me in the slightest. Also 'Clean air' function won't work if you don't have the air quality sensor installed. Again, not an issue for me.

Final step, put everything back together and enjoy.
Doubt: how to know which of the two wires to connect on pins 13 and 17? Do the wires have different colors, or does it matter to connect one or the other?
 

Eliranfla

Passed Driver's Ed
Location
Crato - CE
Hi Tom,

I've not really found any incorrect operation as of yet, but I'm unhappy in the knowledge that it can't monitor/control the temperature coming from the footwell vents. My opinion is that if they've added those sensors then they must be there for a reason.

BUT - The main thing to take away from this is; the chinese supplied adapter cable gives instructions to put the 2x supplied temp sensors into the 2x upper vents, left and right. However the wires in the harness don't both lead to upper vent connectors, one goes to an upper vent sensor, the other goes to a footwell sensor. So the climatronic is reading back a value from the upper vent, thinking it's coming from the footwell.

If I get 5 minutes spare I'll do a block diagram with pin numbers and all that shiz, showing where the wires go and where they're supposed to go.

Also by way of a minor update, I've been driving with the system working as-is for the last week and it's brilliant, as soon as the engine starts to get up to temp then the cabin is warm. The fan only runs as high as it needs to, max level 4 that I've seen, usually 2 or 3. If the windows are misty then the demister button works perfectly. Heated seats work as expected and the Start-Stop is working pretty much as it was with the original non-clima panel as far as I can tell.

Dave.

Hi Tom,

I've not really found any incorrect operation as of yet, but I'm unhappy in the knowledge that it can't monitor/control the temperature coming from the footwell vents. My opinion is that if they've added those sensors then they must be there for a reason.

BUT - The main thing to take away from this is; the chinese supplied adapter cable gives instructions to put the 2x supplied temp sensors into the 2x upper vents, left and right. However the wires in the harness don't both lead to upper vent connectors, one goes to an upper vent sensor, the other goes to a footwell sensor. So the climatronic is reading back a value from the upper vent, thinking it's coming from the footwell.

If I get 5 minutes spare I'll do a block diagram with pin numbers and all that shiz, showing where the wires go and where they're supposed to go.

Also by way of a minor update, I've been driving with the system working as-is for the last week and it's brilliant, as soon as the engine starts to get up to temp then the cabin is warm. The fan only runs as high as it needs to, max level 4 that I've seen, usually 2 or 3. If the windows are misty then the demister button works perfectly. Heated seats work as expected and the Start-Stop is working pretty much as it was with the original non-clima panel as far as I can tell.

Dave.
Friend, could you show them where to go or where to connect the pins (numbering) of the two sensors?
 

Eliranfla

Passed Driver's Ed
Location
Crato - CE
View attachment 192582
View attachment 192583
You can see from the pictures that the G150 sensor is bare wires that go to the back of the main 20 pin plug, whereas the other sensor is already connected to one of the 16 pin plugs.

The 20 pin plug has the connections for the upper vents, left and right, whereas the 16 pin connections are for the footwell vents, left and right.
Guys, in which pin numbering of the 20-pin plug connect the two bare wires of the G150 sensor?
 

carbon_gecko

Go Kart Champion
Location
texas
Car(s)
2016 GOLf tsi 'S'

Attachments

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IWMTom

Autocross Newbie
I really do suggest updating your diagrams as someone could come across this in the future and be rather confused.

Whilst the pins are the same for the vent temperature sender's between the Mk6 and Mk7, that pinout isn't entirely correct for other pins.
 

davegsm82

Go Kart Newbie
Location
Blyth, Northumberland - England
Car(s)
MK7 Golf and T3 Tdi
For whatever reason, I don't get any notifications about this thread, even though I'm the OP.

I have the documentation on what pins actually go where at home, which I found after much experimentation sitting in the car with VCDS and a resistance box. When I happen across them next then I'll upload them, for the most part the MK6 connectors are the same but not all, as IWMTom stated earlier, some functionality has been handed over to CANBUS so the pins asosciated to them are missing, but some pins are still present even though they aren't used.
 

Eliranfla

Passed Driver's Ed
Location
Crato - CE
Por algum motivo, não recebo notificações sobre este tópico, embora eu seja o OP.

Tenho a documentos sobre quais pinos realmente vão e onde em casa, que encontrei depois de muita experimentação sentada no carro com VCDS e uma caixa de resistência. Quando eu encontrar com eles em seguida, carregá-los, na maioria dos casos os conectores MK6 são os mesmos, mas não todos, como IWMTom anteriores anteriores, algumas especificações foram entregues ao CANBUS, de modo que os pinos associados a eles estão faltando , mas alguns pinos ainda estão presentes, embora não sejam usados.
Thanks 👍🤝
 

Acadia18

Autocross Champion
Location
The Greater Boston Metropolitan Area
Car(s)
2019 Golf R
This is more for the people who have done this retrofit with the capacitive climatronic unit from the Chinese market. Has anybody noticed issues with their A/C not working, despite the car saying it's on? My A/C button will light up, and if I go into the menu on the infotainment, it says the A/C is on. But since it has been cold, I didn't notice that the condenser wasn't actually kicking on, and the air wasn't actually being chilled until the other day. I took the unit out, put it in my buddy's Autobahn, did the compressor run in, etc... and it works fine in his car. A\C turns on and blows ice cold. Put it back in my car, and nothing. The interesting thing is, if I put his knob-based climatronic unit in my car, A\C works fine.

When I initially got the capacitive unit, I messed a bunch of stuff up with it trying to fix an issue that couldn't be fixed, but thought I had corrected everything. So I don't know if it was something I did, or just the way it is. But it's strange it'll turn on the A\C in his car, but not in mine .
 

StorableComa

Autocross Champion
Location
SoCal, USA
Car(s)
17 GSW S FWD
Do you have a scan pre-changes you can reference to see what was changed?

Other than that you might be able to grab the stock long code off Rosstech for a similarly equipped car and try copying that over (save your current code first though just in case).
 
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