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hi all, has anyone fitted a towbar to a 2006 passat saloon. They one I have seen say you have to fit a replacement spoiler.

I guess they mean the trim fitted to the bottom edge of the rear bumper.
Has anyone had a towbar fitted to one of these and have you replaced this part.

cheers

hi, ordered the towbar and dedicate electrics and the bumper skirt. mines the 140 saloon. Its about the same weoght as my td4 freelander so not expecting any weight problems.

Should be fitting the towbar next weekend depending on the weather.

We may be going to clumber in a couple of weeks so will find out then how good it is.

I have fitted an witter detachable tow bar and a proper wiring kit to my vw passat 4 motion saloon 56 plate. the tow bar took around 1 hour and the wiring took around 4 hours, yes it was a Ba****d to complete. But i asked the vw garage if i had to enable any part of the car for towing and they said no. When i said that i heard this on a campsite review they looked at me and reminded me of how long they had been in buissnes for and you do not alter the ECU to tow with!!

So do you or dont you i thought i had every thing coverd till i read this page. Please help.

hi, from what i have read, the passat has a ESP function, which is supposed to make the car more stable, to activate the part of the ESP program that relates to trailers you have to go to a main dealer so this can be activated.

i havent fitted my towbar yet, but will be fititng it over th easter break.

what was the worse part of fitting the electrics kit,

They enable the Trailer Stabilisation Program in the ECU and also make the Parking Sensors trailer aware.  There was a sheet of instructions that came with the towbar that you hand to the Volkswagen Service Centre to remind them how to do it! I still have a copy if anyone is interested.

I got a similar reaction to you from one VW dealer "never heard of it mate"! Needless to say I didn't let their greasy monkeys near my lovely Passat. Another dealer, the girl on the service desk said without batting an eyelid, "Certainly sir we can do it for £90"  The whole experience was pleasureable, efficient staff, nice coffee etc. etc. but then I should b****y well hope so for £90 just to hook up my car to their computer and flip a few bits in the ECU!

Thanks for the imput on the ESP ON THE ECU Uint, But did it make any diffrence or do you hope you are never in a possition to find out!!

I will contact the VW Dealer in striling tommorow and ask again. Thanks.

As for jeepster the worst part of the wiring is when you connect up to the cambus wirring up underneath the dash then to the fues box. just double check the wires 3 times as you can blow the cambus light system if you get it wrong. Yes i would not like to know how much that would cost!!

No Idea, I've never induced a snake to check whether the brakes came on automatically!

The parking sensors bit is handy. It senses if I have the trailer/caravan lights connected into the socket and disables the sensors. Saves a lot of annoying beeping! Also I get a mesasge on the dashboard saying things like "Trailer offside indicator bulb failure"...  which was correct, the bulb had blown.....