What excellent information in this thread. Thank you all who have contributed over the years. I'd like to add some of my observations to hopefully help those perusing this thread in the future, and add some questions of my own as I try to complete this retrofit.
Footwell sensor
I decided to follow the lead of @RollBack50 and
@George Ab and mount the G192 Footwell sensor in its stock location to the right of the driver's knees. I agree with the advice of
@FrankieThissen that it's much easier to remove the last part of the footwell venting with a long T20 and just mount G192, 2" from the factory location, but I decided to dig deeper and place it in the factory spot. This makes things much more involved, as you need to remove the trim piece above the driver's knees. In order to do this, there's a string of dominoes that have to fall and you essentially have to partially remove the center console in order to get the trim pieces to the right of the driver's right thigh out. For all this work, you're rewarded with much more room to get things done.
I, too, busted out the drill and a dremel to cut an opening that mimics the stock "press and twist" notch. It turned out quite good:
I found it easier to lightly lubricate the o-ring with silicone grease, allowing the sensor to twist in and snug up firmly but smoothly. I also angled it so that the sensor runs perpendicular to the air flow, as I believe this is the stock mounting angle:
As you might notice in the above pic, one of the boons of digging this deeply is having access to the wire standoffs above G192's stock location. With easy access here, I was able to snake G150 (Left vent sensor, or driver's side for my LHD model) over the footwell ducting and behind the accelerator pedal, with the standoffs holding the wires neatly and out of the way. As this might suggest, I chose to stick with driver-side mounting of the vent sensor, as I'm a stickler for duplicating OEM configurations as much as possible.
Sunlight photo sensor
Here's the part of the retrofit that is still sparsely-documented and only attempted by a few. I'll add my observations here, and follow up with some questions.
I bought the sensor as part of a reasonably-priced kit on aliexpress. Looks to be OEM used, and the harness is of nice quality. Sweet.
I went into this thinking that I would have easy access to the sunlight photo sensor's mounting location in the center of the defroster vent upon removing the infotainment screen. As I should have expected, there's ductwork that makes it impossible to reach it from there, so I had to get creative. I popped off the dummy cover (using two plastic pry sticks on either end, pressing straight up) and shined some light directly down into the hole.
Though faint, I was able to see some light behind the dashboard looking up from underneath in the passenger footwell. This confirmed that I could snake the wires through, so I got out my inspection camera (a cheap unit from harbor freight and guided it through until I could grab the camera end in the passenger footwell. I then affixed the female connector of the harness to the inspection camera and pulled it through without any drama.
Then I used a set of mechanical fingers to grab the footwell end of the harness and snake it right through to the infotainment slot, running the wires through one of the holes down to the climatronic unit.
Nice.
I haven't hooked up the sunlight photo sensor wires yet because I wanted to figure everything out first and pick the collective brain of the mind hive here. Thank you,
@Cuzoe , for posting the wiring information for this sensor. It seems as though pins 3 and 4 on the sunlight photo sensor connector (G107) connect to pins 3 (sunlight photo sensor signal, left) and 1 (sunlight photo sensor signal, right) respectively on J255.
What is the meaning of left and right in this context? It seems to me that there is only
one sunlight photo sensor, and this is clearly mounted in the center. Is "left/right" in this context implying that this
single sunlight photo sensor talks with the left (G150) and right (G151) vent temperature sensors in an OEM setup? If so, is it possible that if I also mount a vent temperature sensor in the right side and wire it up to pin 14 on J255, then the sunlight photo sensor will work as intended from the factory? I am wondering if this is a way to have climatronic account for sunlight that comes in from only one side of the car and raises one side's vent temperatures so that in a true dual zone setup, one passenger gets more adjustments than the other.
@Goodbar , can you comment on why you jumped the wires from pins 3 and 4?. Was it to simply eliminate one of the sunlight photo sensor error codes (e.g. "missing right sensor signal" or something along those lines?) Wouldn't it "trick" climatronic into thinking that equal sunlight is entering the car on both sides? I ordered another vent temp sensor and plan to wire it up in the passenger side and connect it to pin 14, so am I right in assuming that I can just connect pins 3 and 4 to the intended locations (pins 3 and 1) on J255 if both sensors are present and wired up?
P
erhaps more significantly, can you explain how you connected G107's signal ground to J255's pin 17? Did you just use a wire tap? Or did you solder them together. It seems like in the OEM setup, all of these sensors (left vent, right vent, sunlight photo, etc.) share signal ground but do not all "meet up" at J255.
Calibration
I'm having a bit of difficulty with this part of the retrofit. The climatronic panel powered on with no problem and I was able to easily perform the flap stop adaptation by holding buttons 3 and 8 simultaneously, as detailed earlier in this thread. The AC run-in, however, I've been having much more difficulty with. I tried every combination listed in this thread (do things in sequence, make sure module 8 takes an adaptation beforehand, try pressing 16 + 8 for 2 minutes instead of 17+8, etc.). I tried doing this through VCDS, but noticed that basic settings in module 8 does not have "Compressor run in: automatic start" like so many others have cited in the calibration process. Rather, these are the two closest procedures I see:
IDE01938-Compressor run in: manual start
IDE02259-Compressor break-in: automatic start
Regardless of the discrepancy in nomenclature, I tried both procedures. They consistently failed with the following error message:
ERROR: Conditions not correct or request sequence error
I went through the long coding for module 8 using VCDS, following
@davegsm82 's cue that having options from another country enabled might prevent the adaptation from running on a model with your region's typical equipment. Indeed, I changed quite a few things here - looks like my OEM panel came from an LHD diesel model that had the air quality sensor installed. I adjusted all of the bits to best reflect my car's actual equipment. I'm not sure if this made a difference, but I *think* it did. I was eventually able to get SOMETHING to happen doing the A/C run-in procedure in which you hold buttons 17 (max defrost) and 8 (A/C).
Can someone confirm this for me? I ran the flapper end stop procedure first, turned on the car, disabled auto climate, maxed out the blower, opened all three vent positions (defrost, floor, panel), and pressed and held 17 and 8. Upon doing this, the vent positions singled down to defrost only (as expected since button 17 is max defrost). About 10 seconds later, the A/C light came on. I never experienced max defrost and A/C buttons flashing as detailed in the original post, but
does this change in behavior confirmed that I properly ran the A/C run-in procedure? As far as I can tell, the compressor does kick on when I press A/C. I don't know enough about this procedure to know whether a functioning compressor is sufficient evidence that the thing is properly calibrated. Also, I noticed the "compressor magnetic clutch" option in byte 15, bit 2 of the long coding -
Is this supposed to be enabled for NAR models?
One last question for the group here: I followed instructions to enable climate profiles with the appropriate bit change in module 8's long coding, but I was having trouble getting the physical menu button on the climatronic unit to work in the first place. I stumbled upon the instructions in
this thread here , activating the following in module 5F (infotainment) adaptations:
This made the climatronic's menu button bring me to the climate screen on infotainment, and I was able to confirm that climate profiles were enabled and function correctly. However, the screen seems a bit wonky, don't you think?
Notice how the fan speed button is misaligned and tucked under the top banner. Also note that I'm missing the defrost button on the screen (not that it matters, it's redundant, but I like to duplicate OEM stuff when possible). Also, I'm missing the settings button in the lower right. I had that enabled and lost it through some adaptation and can't figure out which one it was. When I pressed that settings button, it gave me two options, one for auxiliary heating (which was enabled, but we don't have that in NAR, right?) and the other for something like automatic recirculation (unchecked, and not sure what this does).
Can anyone advise how to restore full functionality to the climate screen in infotainment? What adaptations are supposed to be done?
Thank you all again for the fabulous information in this thread.