Winter is all but wrapped up here in the northern hemisphere, so what better time to post a heated-steering-wheel retrofit thread.
Around mid-December, I actually decided to dig into this, but could never find a straightforward how-to thread. Lots of bits and pieces scattered here and there, but keeping track of all of them, and discerning what was conjecture and what was known to work (and why)....couldn't find anything definitive.
And thus...
On a scale of "change the trim panel around your shifter" to "retrofit DCC", this skews much closer to the former. Big thanks to
@Cuzoe for helping with parts and general "just-do-it"-ness, and
this thread over at Vortex (that revolved a lot more around whether this would work in non-Climatronic cars, and had a lot of unknowns for a long time; hence this write-up).
Reader's Digest condensed version (note: North American GSW TDI Highline (SEL) trim, so has Climatronic - which may be a prerequisite):
- Get the parts: Steering wheel, clockspring, 18G wire, 14-pin connector (or adapter harness). VCDS needed to do some coding.
- Remove steering wheel (airbag first, of course; and whether you disconnect battery like you should or not, I will leave between you and your deity of choice) and trim around steering wheel, as well as lower under the dash to gain access to fuse panel.
- Tap 12V and add a ground wire.
- Move wires around on connector.
- Replace clockspring.
- Replace steering wheel.
- Flip two bits in two bytes.
- Turn it on.
Long-winded version:
Parts:
- Steering wheel
- There are many Mk7 heated steering wheels out there, off of Passat, Atlas, Tiguan, etc. Part number I order was 5G0419091FH (although my research indicated that 5G0419091AA or 5G0419091AB also have heating element). You can tell from photos of the SW that there's a little two-wire connector (yellow arrow) under the airbag.
- And I discovered that while there are numerous steering wheels that use that same shape of airbag, there are also at least a couple different iterations of the "hooks" (red arrow below) that hold the airbag retention spring wires. Look at the photos of what you're buying and make sure it matches what you have in your car.
View attachment 242947
- The "...FH" steering wheel I ordered had shifter paddles, but my car's a 6MT, so I had to remove the bezel to get at the screws that hold in the paddles, but having done that a few times in the past, it's pretty easy.
- Clockspring:
- This is the part that had me confounded for the longest time. What you're looking for is a clockspring that has the heating element connector (accepts the above-mentioned two-wire connector from the steering wheel).
- @Cuzoe (who I thank for his research and help, but also question (myself, if not him) for goading me into half of these retrofits....and then subsequently thank profusely again once I get it all together and working
) discovered that NAR cars (Mk7 Golf anyway) most typically have Valeo signal / wiper stalks, and thus come stock with a 5Q0953569A clockspring. Therefore, the proper clockspring for our cars is 5Q0953569B (since superseded by 5Q0953569C, if you're ordering through a dealer).
(Part number on the stalks in my car, which I did not remove or change:
- The other potential option is 5Q0953549D - which is much cheaper (at least in the USA - around $200 from the dealer, but for some reason, over $600 in Canada?!). These are apparently spec'd on RoW cars, and are paired with stalks made by Costal.
(which can be had for as little as $60-$80 on eBay or ProxyParts or the like. Aliexpress also has the 5Q0953549D for about $100USD, so buying clockspring + stalks might be less expensive in some instances.
General rule of thumb from what I've gathered: Do a scan of the car, and if the Module 16 - Steering Wheel returns a *569 part number, stick with *569 (B or C). If your scan returns *549, stick with *549 ("D" seems to be the appropriate appendage).
(Comparison of the *569A clockspring that came stock on my car, and the replacement *569B - note the heater connection on the face, as well as the two heavier wiring pins on the *569B on the right).
Stock *569A clockspring on left; heated *569B on right
- Wiring:
- Our NAR cars come with a 16-pin connector on the clockspring (5Q0953569A), while the heated SW clockspring has a 14-pin connector, where two of the pins are much heavier-gauge (for the heating element wires).
- I purchased a wiring adapter harness from Kufatec, but once I got it, saw what it was and what needed to be done, realized I could've saved myself ~$100USD by doing it myself. You'd need a 14-pin connector (5Q0972726), repair wire terminals for those two heavier-gauge wires (dealer from whom you'd order the 5Q0972726 connector should be able to tell you what terminal you'd need), and then transfer the other wires from the pre-existing 16-pin connector to the newer 14-pin iteration. (image taken from this post/thread over at the 'tex; big thanks to the folks there for providing inspiration that this was do-able)
Or, put another way (colors may vary); stock = 16-pin:
- Pin 1 (16-pin) red/white to Pin 2 (14-pin)
- Pin 2 (16-pin) brown to Pin 4 (14-pin)
- Pin 3 (16-pin) orange/brown to Pin 5 (14-pin)
- Pin 4 (16-pin) orange/green to 6 (14-pin)
- Pin 5 (16-pin) black/white to Pin 7 (14-pin)
- Pin 6 (16-pin) black/red (if existing) to Pin 13 (14-pin)
- Pin 7 (16-pin) purple/red to Pin 12 (14-pin)
- Pin 8 (16- pin) purple/blue to Pin 14 (14-pin)
- Pin 11 (16-pin) blue/grey to Pin 9 (14-pin)
- Pin 14 (16-pin) black/grey to Pin 10 (14-pin)
- Pin 16 (16-pin) black to Pin 11 (14-pin)
- The only additional wires needed are +12V from a Terminal 30 connection, and ground.
- Factory position is adding a fuse at position SC2, but that looks like a LOT of work, so I took the path of much lesser resistance (electricity pun not intended) and simply used a "add a circuit" fuse tap on SC24 (30A fuse for sunroof and sunshade - chances of me overloading that by using both of those at the same time I'm using heated steering wheel are fairly slim.
- Ground wire I attached to one of the 10mm bolts that secures the fuse panel to the supporting metal substructure.
Showing SC 24 position (disregard fuse tap in this photo; that's from a different retrofit)
- Fuse tap added; ground wire attached to bolt similar to the grey bolt in upper-left
- Coding:
- Really not much to it.
(This was probably helped significantly by the fact that I was using used parts. I don't know how much (if any) parameterization would be necessary with new-new parts, but used were cheaper ($300 for SW; $150 for clockspring, half of which was shipping...which took three weeks
), and worked well for me.)
- Module 08 (HVAC) - Coding - Long Coding Helper (and say "yes" to the "trying experimental features" to see more descriptions of bits)
- Byte11: Add check to bit2 and bit3 (not sure that bit3 does anything, but I figured, why not)
- Byte13: Not sure if this adds anything, but I turned those bytes on as well.
- Activating:
- Note: Car has to be running for heated seats and heated SW to heat up; simply turning on ignition will not activate those heaters
- Press MENU button on HVAC controls (embarrassingly, as I was trying to get the heated SW option to show up in my MIB display, and being completely dumbfounded as to how to possibly do that, I had no idea this button existed, despite looking directly at it every time I've adjusted the heat or fan speed
).
- Anyway, once you press that, you should get the steering wheel icon showing up at the bottom of the screen. Most likely white (off).
Give it a tap, it turns yellow, and in a couple minutes, you've got heat!
- And this can be verified in the Advanced Measuring Values of Module-16 (Steering Wheel):
Happy hot hands!
View attachment IMG_1382.jpg
