Why A Dealer Refused To Change A Car's Features

I was asked why a dealership service department would refuse to change the coding in a car to make the turn signals flash 5 times instead of 3.

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[aussiebloke]

On my Hyundai, I can change the number of flashes to 3, 5, or 7.  3 isn't safe, it's way too short a time.  Either your flashers stop mid-lane change, or sometimes before you actually get to leave your lane, if you have to wait for someone to finish passing in the other lane (seen this happen frequently when someone's flashers go on briefly, but the car stays in its lane...then a couple of seconds after the flashers stop, when it looks like they've changed their minds, they actually start to change lanes.)  I personally prefer the older system where you just keep a little pressure on the stalk and it keeps flashing - and stops when I let go.  it gives more control to the driver, and seems to me much easier than trying to predict how long your lane changes will take.

[kdash]

That sucks. My car has the option to change the setting from 3, 5, and 7 blinks. I prefer the 5, plenty of time to give anyone advance notice of my intention to change lanes (like a speeding car or bike). So I can see where Richard was coming from.

[One_Guy]

As a VCDS owner myself i am also glad they didn't reveal who owns them and where they live.

[jimevans]

I wish more people could understand why dealers can't legally do certain things, even when it's technically possible. EG: We had a customer who wanted racing seats and a racing steering wheel installed in his daily driver, plus wanted the airbag warning systems disabled. We refused. So he went down the street to another shop, had the parts installed and came back asking again for the airbag warning system to be turned off. We refused again. He screamed, shouted and threatened to sue us for not performing this illegal service. It was beyond his grasp that by removing 3 airbags and both seatbelt tensioners, the dealer and the manufacturer would be placed in huge jeopardy for a litany of reasons, the foremost of which was that if he was threatening legal action for not fulfilling his request, we could imagine the nightmare he'd cause us if he got hurt because of the absence of a factory safety feature.

[codeman-dev]

My wife's Hyundai Sonata has this as an option in her dash controls. Really impressive system in my opinion.

[evanjeffrey]

Our Toyota dealer will do some stuff like this, for instance, for some reason the Prius (maybe all hybrid/stop-start vehicles?) constantly beep when in reverse, but they will change that if you ask so that it only beeps once. They even do it for free if you bought the car from them. I am sure there are some things they won't change, either because they aren't allowed to, or they simply aren't sure. Unless it is a common request, or the manufacturer has specifically told them it is OK, it almost certainly isn't worth their time to find out if something is OK.

[bubbafinch]

obd eleven is probably the cheapest option, you don't need to buy credits, just go into the right system and figure it out using vagcom guide. It's easy, I did this exact thing in my Jetta in about two minutes.

[johnburrows]

Here in the U.K. Our traffic laws only permit an indicator or 'blinker' to operate at only 2-3 times per second, so anything else would be considered illegal.

[wishfuldjtill]

+HumbleMechanic... First to all I wanna to thans your or all your awesome videos. I'm your fan!

Another reasons that the VW dealerships doesn't allow to recode or activate some features in their cars are:

a)The feature that you wanna recode probably are forbidden in your country (For example if your country has a normative that specifies that the country in question is noise-free ODIS doesn't allow to activate the acoustical advice of arming or disarming the anti theft alarm). The cars has their coding in function of their trim and region of destination basing of their VIN.

b)The dealer technicians with ODIS doesn't have the facillities that Ross-Tech gives you with the label files with VCDS. The technicians need to know all the hexadecimal words for any minimal function that they want to activate and ODIS, when they need to recode a module without VCDS or some tool like that, perform the coding with their Software Version Management (SVM) and all their coding are discrete and online, the technician doesn't know how the coding or reflashing was performed

c)In the newest UDS models like the mk7 Golf we can access and activate or deactivate almost all the features that the car has as a standard equipment. For example, I'm able to activate the reverse aiming for the passenger rearview and syncronized adjustment mirrors and stuff like that. In addition with VCDS we can modify all the lightning layout to our preferences but some of their functions doesn't work as we wanna expect if the car doesn't went out of the factory with those features. For these reason the VAG group saves a lot of time in warranty claims.

Please give us more of your gorgeous work. Greetings from Mexico

[ElectroVeeDub]

When technicians or service centers refuse work its usually because they're concerned of losing money, or a legal liability that gets them in trouble.

[ronaldderooij]

I wonder if Mitsubishi also has something like a VAGCOM. Although, in my owner's manual it is stated that I can go to the dealership and let all the comfort items tweak to my liking (probably not for free, but that is OK). It specifically stated the way the car locks/unlocks, the duration of interior light on after switching off the engine, the way the blinkers work when using central locking, the night/day dashboard lighting etc. etc. So yeah, I want my blinkers to do five blinks too when changing lanes. I think three is a bit too short.

[ultimatercracer]

I would not say all dealers will refuse to do any modifications to a customers car because by me there is a local VW dealer who is tuner/mod friendly as well as a few other dealers. but for the most part a dealer will refuse

[joesunnydays]

Yes VAGCOM can change the number of iterations. I did to my Mk6 Golf when I owned a VAGCOM.

[TheGoorga]

Looking forward to the VAG com video 😀

[AnHRTBus]

I'll tell you right now that any official VAG tech will have some form of VAGCom for coding, be it the electromechanical steering rack, the flash to pass headlights, or in this gentleman's case, changing not the frequency of the blink, but rather the value of blinks.
if I remember correctly it's in single digits values, can't remember the block, but it's either a 0 (off/disabled, note that this can be done in the multi function display, however assigning a zero value in the block disables the feature completely) 1 (for 3 blinks) and 2 (for 5). don't think they go higher though.

[braddowns]

when I worked at the dealer. we could not modify or change any type of safety items. too much liability.

[devinsmith]

Any alterations that is not considered a retrofit is usually not authorised by the manufacturer. This has been ignored by allot of people. And when the car has a problem, they send the car back to the dealer due to some shoddy modifications, dealer says were not touching it. Its a liability.

[rickgaine]

If Volkswagen does not want you enabling this feature, why is it even available as an option to be programmed?

[caddyking]

Charles-My 20th anniversary gti just puked 1st and 2nd gear. I saw online that it's a common problem. My local VW dealership quoted $4350 for repair. That's the value of the car at 80k miles. It's my only running VW and I don't have the time to do the repair myself. Should I trust the work to Joe Blow espanol down the street or should I trade it in on a Kia?

[albergan]

If a turn signal was a safety item, police would have to arrest anyone not using them, so I dont believe they are.