Towbar Fitting

[LiamV87]

Good morning.

Looking for some advice from anyone who has fitted a towbar themselves to a sportline plus.

I’m a hands on individual and confident in carrying out installations like this and begrudge paying the money for an installer. Are there any tips or things to be wary of.

My biggest concerns would be the parking sensors and the virtual pedal for the boot opening. I obviously don’t want the towbar to interfere with either of these.

Any recommendations welcome.

Thanks Liam

[Fossilnot]

I too consider myself ‘hands on’ and fully intended to fit an aftermarket towbar to my previous Enyaq. The mechanical nuts and bolts aspects of the job looked perfectly straightforward and a lot simpler than many of the towbars I’ve fitted to cars in the past. The size of the rear bumper was a bit daunting and I accepted that it would be sensible to enlist assistance with it if I was to avoid paint damage…

What caused me to think again were the naysayers on here! They raised some perfectly valid points to which I probably had not given sufficient consideration:

1. Aftermarket fitment of electricals likely to prejudice software updates

2. Necessity for dealer coding

3. Difficulty in mating trailer lights to sequential lights.

The parking sensors didn’t bother me at all as, on previous vehicles, they shrieked only when hitched up to a trailer and in reverse. I don’t spend a lot of time reversing with a trailer… my previous Enyaq did not have the foot waggling boot opening thingy so that was not a consideration. (My current Enyaq does have it but I’ve gone to Plan B anyway.)

Plan B was to fit a towbar to the tip car-hardest towbar I’ve ever done in respect of nuts and bolts!

Fossilnot

[Aragorn]

I also looked into it and the issues boil down to essentially software. From reading others experiences on here i think i can summarise it thus:

The dealer wont code the car unless they install the towbar, and the dealer will not fit an aftermarket bar, only the genuine skoda part. If you do go this route, it'll all Just Work and you wont have any issues, as the coding will be permanently added to the vehicle details in the central computer. Cost is likely to be £1500ish from my best guess, the parts alone from the dealer are about a grand. You do however get the fancy motorised drop down towbar. You'll also kick yourself for not just paying £700 to have it added to the build from the factory...

For a DIY install, you need a vehicle specific wiring kit which comes with a CANBUS module which interfaces with the car, your not manually wiring up lights like the old days. If your car has towbar prep, the wiring is all neatly available at a plug in the rear arch. If not, you have to run wiring thru the car to the Body Control ECU and fuse box in the front passenger footwell. Instructions to apply the coding yourself come with the towbar kit, requires certain diagnostic kit (eg VCDS) and that will properly setup the parking sensors and rear pedestrian crash sensors etc. Once all of thats done it will all work correctly. The car will know a trailer is connected and disable the parking sensors and rear pedestrian warning etc as appropriate.

However, because the dealer/central computer system doesnt know about the towbar, its been found that major software updates will reset all of the coding values to default. To make matters worse, with the towbar module installed but the coding removed, the car takes a bit of a fit and brings up loads of warnings. Further more, the dealerships seem to be lacking knowledge and dont always seem to immediately realise WHY the car has all these errors, but the fix is ofcourse to reapply the trailer coding. Which the dealership wont do. So a few folks in this situation have had to take the car back to the trailer installer and have them recode the car (for money!)

I havent heard of OTA updates causing any issues thus far, only the big ME2 to ME3 update done at the dealership where all the cars modules are fully reprogrammed and reset. That said, i'm not sure many cars have had any substantial OTA updates, that seems to never be happening.

As a result of all of this, i've kinda held back from moving forwards with the towbar. I suspect i probably will do it eventually, but for now i've been making do with the tow bar on the older car.