Text from the Daily Mirror. The remarkable vehicle is the VW Golf GTI ´53 plus 1´ - a codename which refers to the number 53 that Herbie, the famous VW Lovebug carried when racing in his Hollywood adventures. Using electronic eyes using radar and laser sensors in the grille to ´read´ the road and send the details back to its computer brain. A sat-nav system can track it´s exact position and the car can then work out all the bends and twists it has to get through before setting off. To prove this is a real development, VW invited guests to a test track near their world headquarters in Wolfsburg in northern Germany and asked them to design for themselves a variety of different courses, using road cones. They then watched the car navigate around them - on its own. Until now the fully self driving car has been the stuff of fantasy. Many people will remember watching the Herbie films and Knight Rider in awe, seeing the Love Bug and K.I.T, the cars that drove themelves, wondering if such a vehicle would ever exist.
The steering, for example, delivers little in the way of feedback, and the ESP system can be a little too intrusive at times. The biggest let down is the manual gearbox: the shift isn’t the smoothest and the revs hang for too long, making every upshift feel like the clutch is slipping. On the plus side, the pedals - aluminium finished in the GT - are well placed for rev-matching downshifts. The rest of the cabin gets subtle upgrades to lift it beyond the standard Ceed. The black upholstery features red stitching, and the leather/suede-effect sports seats look fantastic and offer great support under hard cornering. There’s a flat bottomed steering wheel and black headlining, while the 4.2-inch screen between the dials features a Sports display that shows temperature and boost gauges. The Ceed GT is priced at £25,535, and on a three-year PCP finance deal with a 10 per cent deposit, it costs roughly £329 per month. While the equivalent Astra costs less to buy outright, the Kia’s stronger residuals and more competitive rate of interest means that, on equal terms, the Astra costs just £1.50 less per month. For a car that is better equipped, more fun to drive, and available with a class-leading seven-year warranty, the Kia seems like a bargain.
Somewhere between 1997 and 1998, VW and Audi started using diagnostics-capable radios in most of their models. That means the dealer's scan tools (and our own VCDS system) can talk to the radio. So you can set various options, like whether a CD player is connected, whether there's an amplified or conventional antenna, and so on. In addition, these radios constantly monitor their speaker outputs and if you have an open or short circuit to one of the speakers, even a momentary one, they will record a fault code. 12 back into the harness. Now people hardly ever put older stock radios in newer cars. What they often do is install better after-market radios. And they most often do this by using an aftermarket adapter-harness which plugs right into the car's harness, so they don't have to cut up the car's harness. 12 and the pin where the K-line is on newer models. So you install your fancy new radio with one of these and everything works fine until.. 12. The K-Line is not used for intra-vehicle communications.
But a scan-tool initializes a communications session by pulling the K-line to ground. The K-line is supposed to have some voltage on it, but through a high-impedance source. 12 on it, something has to give! What "gives" is usually the scan-tool's output driver for the K-line. Car interface adapter that we provide with our VAG-COM software has a small user-replaceable fuse protecting the K-Line output driver, and there's a spare fuse taped under the lid of the little box. Our other interfaces use output drivers that are thermally protected against shorts. They don't need a fuse. 12, they simply won't work in that car, but it won't hurt them either. Some dealers will refuse to scan any car that has an aftermarket radio. Since most dealers have "killed" a few of their very expensive scan-tools, I can sort of understand why. If you can successfully scan the car with VAG-COM, you know it's safe -- and can likely convince the dealership that it's safe too. You can test for this problem yourself without removing the radio.
First, if your car is a 1996 or earlier model, don't bother -- the K-Line doesn't go to the radio harness and there is no possibility that that the car has this problem. If you have a Vag-Saver : Simply turn the ignition ON and plug in the Vag-Saver. Look at the LED. Green is OK, Red is not OK. If you have a volt-meter: measure the voltage between pins 4 and 7 of the diagnostic connector with the ignition and radio turned ON. If it's under 9V, your K-line is fine. If it's over 9V, the results are inconclusive. You'll need a 1k Ohm (approximately) resistor. Put it between pins 4 and 7 of the diagnostic connector. Now use the volt-meter to measure the voltage between 4 and 7 (in parallel with the resistor). If it's under 1V, you don't have the problem. If it remains near 12V (the resistor will get hot!) you do have this problem and you'll need to fix it per the the instructions below. If you don't have a volt-meter: Go to Radio-Shack and buy a 1K-ohm resistor. 0.99 for a pack of 5. Temporarily place the resistor between pins 4 and 7 of your diagnostic connector. Ensure it's making contact with both pins. 12. If it does not get hot, you're fine. Do NOT install this resistor in the port. 12V. If the resistor gets hot, then pull it out and fix the problem by disconnecting the k-line from the stereo's wiring harness. Make sure that the k-line is not connected to anything if you have an aftermarket radio! Some 2002 and newer VW's come with the double-DIN "Premium VI" radio. This radio does not have a k-line connection, but rather has a CAN-high and CAN-low.
