With my car, I've set it up so that when the key is removed from the ignition, all the doors unlock. You can do this yourself if you have a VAG COM setup, or your local VW dealer can do this. It is nice if you put something the back seat, when you arive at your location, you get out of the car and the rear doors are unlocked.
Now if you put something in the rear hatch, when you arive at your location you need to trigger the door switch for the rear hatch to gain access. Or if you are coming back to your wagon after shopping at Wally World, you have to hold the remote's button for the rear hatch.
What I want is when the driver's door unlocks, the rear hatch can be opened. Pull the key out of the ignition, all doors unlock and I can walk back to the rear hatch and open it. Walk up to my car and disarm the alarm and open the rear hatch.
One important item to keep in mind is that on a wagon, the rear hatch is not unlatched when you trigger the door switch or depress the button on the remote. What happens when you do those things, the Comfort Control Module thinks "OK, they would like to open the rear hatch, I'll give them 60 seconds to try to open the rear hatch". When you try to open the rear hatch, there is a little micro switch in the grip part that gets triggered and then a servo motor pops the latch. If you don't try to open the rear hatch, after the 60 seconds, the Comfort Control Modules will ignore that micro switch in the grip.
Doing this mod will have one "side effect", when you get out of the car and don't open the rear hatch but arm the alarm, the horn won't "beep" until the the Comfort Control Module times out the option to open the hatch.... 60 seconds later.
OK, before this gets boring, lets get on with the fun stuff.... modding the car. When the driver's door unlocks, the Comfort Control Module will think you also triggered that switch in the door to unlatch the rear hatch. If you don't go to the hatch after 60 seconds, then the hatch won't open. The parts you will need for this mod:
A few basic tools will be needed:
Lets go.....
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Roll the window all the way down. With a small screw driver, work the edge of the inner cover on the door panel loose and pull it out. |
| With your finger tips, push up on the switch pack asm holder, it is only snapped in. Pop it free and disconntect the wiring harness from it. |  |
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You will now see three phillip screws, use your #3 phillips driver and remove them. |
| There is a single phillips screw up towards the top of the door panel, use your #2 phillips driver to remove it. |  |
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There are three Torx screws along the bottom edge of the door panel, remove them with your T20 driver. |
| Grasp the bottom of the door panel and with a switch yank, pull the door panel free from the door. There are a series of plastic snapps along the outer edges. Sometimes they will break when you do this, don't worry to much if you break 1 or 2, the door panel will not rattle when you put it all back together. |  |
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Work your finger tips under the top lip of the door panel and try to "peel" it back towards you while pulling up a little. It should work free without to much effort. Once you have the door panel free, unhook the door latch cable release, and disconnect all of the wiring harnesses. Set door panel in a safe place (back seat). |
| With a sharp knife of razor, carefully cut the tape back from the wiring harness that runs towards the door latch. You shouldn't need to expose to much. |  |
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In looking at the wiring diagram for my car, the 2 wires that go to the servo motor for the power lock are blue with a yellow tracer and "lilac" (purple) with a yellow trace. When you lock the door, one wire is positive, the other negative. When you unlock the door, the positive and negative switch wires. What you are looking for is the negative wire when you unlock. Using a LED test light, find that wire. In my case, it was the blue w/yellow trace. For those who want pin outs, on the door control module, it is T29/1 which runs to pin T8c/2 of the door latch. It is kind of hard to tell, but in this pic, the LED is green meaning it has a negative (ground) path. It would only light up green for about 1 second when the unlock button on the remote was pressed. |
| Now that I'm 100% sure about my wire, I cut it and used a butt connector to splice in the extra wire. This connector is a heat shrink type, it has a hot-melt type glue in it as well to help seal off everything. These are standard issue in the VW wiring harness repair kit, and come with a bloated price, I've seen pretty much the same thing at Auto Zone before. |  |
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Here is an overall shot of the wire running from the blue wire w/yellow trace down to the wire for the rear hatch switch. It is the brown wire with green trace, this is pin T5q/1 for that terminal. In the wiring diagram it shows the wire as brown with a blue trace, so make sure you double check these things. |
| Here is a closeup of the T5q terminal with the crimp and extra wire tapped in. Again, I tapped into pin #1 on this connector. |  |
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To keep the extra wire in check, I ran it behind some of the tape where the plactic clips are. |
| Now with the 2 wires joined together, I had not locked the door because that would send a positive signal down to a wire that is only looking for a negative signal. A diode acts like a one way valve for electricity. Radio Shack part number 276-1141, they come in a 2 pack for about $1.70. You want the end with the white band connected towards the power lock wire, and the other end connected to the hatch switch end. Now soldering in the cold and dark is not as easy as it sounds, hence my crappy work here. I used some heat shrink tubing to cover this all up. Once the diode in is in place, when the door is locked, that positive signal will be stopped, but a negative signal will pass right on though. |  |
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A little electrical tape to wrap everything up and you are ready to put the door panel back in place. |
With this mod, when I pull the key out of the ignition and the door unlock, I can get out and walk to the rear of the car and open the hatch. And when I walk up to the car and disarm the alarm, I can open the rear hatch. If I don't ever open the hatch, after 60 seconds it times out and the hatch won't open.
Why should you send a postcard? Because it is cheap to do and as we all know, the US Post Office is funding it's Super Muntant Army Project with fees from postcards stamps. I would really like to see a Super Muntant Army deliever my mail in the near future.
Thank you.
