OBC hack

[bigb]

Originally Posted by Tool Pants

There is really no way for you to determine if it is on unless you do the retrofit and see if it works. The car does not come from the factory already turned on. The OBC is in the instrument cluster and the cluster has to be connected to the car to turn it on, so you cannot have it turned on by mail. Unless you remove the cluster, send it to someone, and your cluster is hooked up to another car and then your cluster's OBC is turned on.

If you want to see for sure if it is on then you can try this.

http://www.renntech.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=16650

You hook up one VW 009 wire in slot 23 of the gray connector and touch the other end of the wire to ground. I did this on Varun's 2001 and the OBC worked. But on his car we knew the OBC was turned on because I checked to make sure it was on with a PST2. A local dealer had turned it on some time before we did the retrofit on his car.

To add to what TP said, slot 23 acts as a toggle between all the functions provided by the OBC. So, you should be able to switch between all functions using the method Jeff described above.

That said, I should caution you that just in case your OBC is not turned on, and you choose not to do the entire hack, then you be doing the same work twice. In other words, by the time you are able to connect pin 23 to a ground, most of the work is already done, and you might as well do the rest.

Also make sure that you order the correct VW wire - the one listed by TP is the right one. The other one is not as snug a fit.