Need to replace water damaged ECU- ant recommendations?

mikey72

rosie383 wrote: »

Good idea. I didn't realise the ECU was used in the other cars too. I did know that the front of the polo saloon is the same as the front of a caddy, but that hasn't been a help so far with this problem.

It was used in the skoda as well.
There are also a lot of minor variations to the ecu map, that adjust performance and loading, but on a 2001 car it won't make a lot of difference to you, so any 1.9tdi unit should work on your car well enough to pass the mot and drive ok.

rosie383

All we really need is to get the car driving so we can sell it. We already have another car, so just want rid of the polo. How can we find out if the ECU is vehicle specific?

custardy

you say you want your old data transferred over?
most recon ECU's i have heard of are virginised
so when you install it the car sets itself up as its a first use
so the likes of imobilisers are all coded in

rosie383

Does that mean it would work, or it wouldn't?

custardy

rosie383 wrote: »

Does that mean it would work, or it wouldn't?

thats the whole point of getting the ECU virginised
to bypass the problems of the immobiliser being coded to another car.
have you not spoken to one of the ECU places to ask what the recommend?

rosie383

Have spoken to a few different places and TBH, they are all telling us different things. That is why I am on here looking for recommendations, as I really want a firm that will tell us straight what we need.

patman99

Your saloon Polo uses the same engine/gearbox/electrics as the hatchback version. The only difference between the 2 is the shape of the rear end.

rosie383

It's not the same, sorry. The first thing we had to get was a wiper linkage, and the measurements for anything around that area were very different between the saloon and hatchback. Believe me, if we'd been able to get hatchback parts to fit all the bits that have gone wrong on our car since we bought it, life would have been so much easier.

custardy

rosie383 wrote: »

It's not the same, sorry. The first thing we had to get was a wiper linkage, and the measurements for anything around that area were very different between the saloon and hatchback. Believe me, if we'd been able to get hatchback parts to fit all the bits that have gone wrong on our car since we bought it, life would have been so much easier.

its unlikely to matter on the ECU
same engine/box
my advice would be to seek out a model/marque specific forum
I dont know VW's well enough to give specific info and wouldnt want you spending money on my guess.

redux

rosie383 wrote: »

... and as the ECU in these cars is particularly prone to water damage, ...

Can I ask how the water damage happened?

On some cars, water was getting into the ECU or other electronics boxes. Where a cluster of cables goes fairly tightly through a sealing grommet around the edge of a hole, the water can still get driven in via all the tiny gaps between the wires in the middle.

Problems occur with windows and central locking behaving rather strangely amongst other things.

Someone I know had these sort of issues on an Audi, and discovered via a friend of a friend in the motor trade that on some Volkswagen models there had been either a recall or a technical note to sort such issues out on the next service, by improving the waterproofing of a box or two.

Audi hadn't bothered issuing a similar instruction on that car. They checked the car themselves and found a couple of inches of water in the bottom of a box, emptied and dried it, and used silicone rubber to seal up the cables

I don't want top stir things up too much, but I wonder if that applies to your car. Maybe it's too late to discuss as a warranty type issue after all this time, but I'd be tempted to ask a question or two.