VAG-COM

31st December 2006

After being almost persuaded to buy one of these pretty much ever since buying my Mk V golf, in early December I finally bit the bullet and bought a Micro-CAN interface from Ross-Tech to enable me to run their VAG-COM/VCDS software.

As my car does not have any Multi-Function Display (MFD) I had no way of changing any of it's settings. I also found that asking my local VW dealer to make changes for me was more trouble than it was worth.

I had two settings which I had particularly wanted to change for a while. One was that since my car had had it's windscreen replaced, the Auto Wipers and Auto Lights were not functioning as they used to. I therefore wanted to adjust the sensitivity of the sensor. The second was to adjust the length of time the Coming Home/Leaving Home lights stayed on for. Both of these settings could be changed using VAG-COM.

Using the software does take a little getting used to and I was aware that you could really mess up the car's settings if you didn't know what you were doing. So I took my time exploring the VAG-COM's capabilities before making the required changes. But now I have both settings as I want them and am very happy with the results.

I have had a good look around to see what other settings I can change on my Mk V but to be honest, there aren't many (that have been discovered yet anyway) that I'm interested in. For more info on what settings you can change, take a look at http://en.openobd.org/vw/golf_1k.htm or take a look at any of the many VAG-COM discussion forums. Personally however, I find a lot of the VAG-COM discussion forums are full of the same posts about how to make certain setting changes or people asking what particular fault codes mean. The saying, "Can't see the wood for the trees" comes to mind.

As well as allowing you to make changes to your car's settings, VAG-COM also allows you to retrieve information about faults recorded by your car. When I first did a fault scan I was surprised to actually find a fault stored. Apparently I have an intermittent glow plug failure on cylinder #3. I haven't noticed any rough running on startup so for now I'm not too worried. (Don't even know where the glow plugs are on this car in order to check!)