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ACC Replacement for 2013 VW Golf GT

StevieD66

New member
Location
Charlbury, Oxfordshire
Car(s)
VW Golf MK7 GT BM
Hi All. I have been told by my VW dealer that my ACC radar, dome shaped Long Range Radar is faulty and needs to be replaced! They have quoted £1800 to supply and fit a new one! I have looked to buy a second hand one but struggling to find one. I can however see loads of the later version flat Middle Range Radar available at reasonable prices. Can anybody tell me if it possible to replace the dome shaped one for a flat one, the wiring socket looks the same with 8 pins? Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!
 
Last edited:

IWMTom

Autocross Newbie
Hi All. I have been told by my VW dealer that my ACC radar, dome shaped Long Range Radar is faulty and needs to be replaced! They have quoted £1800 to supply and fit a new one! I have looked to by a second hand one but struggling to find one. I can however see loads of the later version flat Middle Range Radar available at reasonable prices. Can anybody tell me if it possible to replace the dome shaped one for a flat one, the wiring socket looks the same with 8 pins? Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!
Nope, but @davegsm82 was considering starting up a mail in repair service for these dome radars in the UK. Try getting in touch?
 

davegsm82

Go Kart Newbie
Location
Blyth, Northumberland - England
Car(s)
MK7 Golf and T3 Tdi
StevieD has messaged me about this but the question gets asked quite a lot so I will leave all of the information here so hopefully others searching for information can benefit from it.

I will be offering a postal repair service (in the UK, although if required I can accept and send abroad) for the domed front Radars, which were fitted to the 2013-2014 models.

These radars suffer really badly with alloy corrosion leading to water ingress, which damages either the PCB (Circuit board) inside, the main connector on the bottom, or in some cases both.

The fault will usually manifest itself as either;

1) Radar completely dead - When turning the ignition on, the car will display "ACC Starting..." then immediately "ACC not available" and "Start-Stop Error". When you press the button on the end of the indicator stalk, you will not be able to put a tick in the box and cruise control will not work.

2) Radar intermittent - usually when first turning on the car it will display the above message, but turning the key off and on again will make the radar work.

Physically, the later flat front radar will fit, and the plug on the bottom is the same. However they are incompatible because they sort of 'speak a different language' to each other, and the car expects to hear only one or other of the languages. The dealer would be able to make it work likely by updating the firmware in the CAN Gateway, but swapping to one of these flat-front radars isn't something that is practical for a home-gamer. It took me a lot of pouring over CANBUS data and experimenting with my own car to find this out.

This is the reason why I'm looking to offer the repair service as I have successfully repaired my own radar and several others. The only downside to this, by my own admission is that it isn't going to be cheap, probably around £250-300 as although the radar is a tiny part of the car, it's incredibly delicate and labour intensive to repair. The repair service includes shot-blasting of the case, extraction and replacement of the rear cover screws which always snap when you try to remove them (and have to be either drilled out or extensions welded on and unscrewed), a new rear seal and bench testing. Some radars need the connector replaced, the original isn't available as a spare part, however I can fit an alternative connector on a short length of cable, which then plugs into your cars original loom so there's no modification required, just plug back in and play.

The repair would be no-fix, no fee, other than return postage. I do the elecrical assesment and repairs first, if it's completely knackered then I wouldn't bother repairing the case as that's about 70% of the time, simply returning the unit in parts. If it's a viable repair then I progress to the full repair.

Regards, Dave.
 
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