Morning all,

SWMBO and I have had Seat and VW (currently have a 57 plate VW Touran 1.9 TDI) cars for a while now and I'm considering investing in either VAG-COM or VCDS to help me with diagnostics etc. I'm not sure which one would work best on our current car so have a few questions:

We don't have laptops with serial ports, only USB and Ethernet ports.

We have phones with USB micro B ports, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.


1. Which one should I be looking at?

2. Where is a sensible place to buy from? (I've seen Ross Tech mentioned a few times online)

3. Can anyone who has/uses such a thing report back on how well they work for the home mechanic?

4. Any other advice or cautions people may have?


Thanks,
Nick

I used the free Vagcom lite on my old VRS,but that won't work on your newer car I don't think.

IIRC it's about £300 for the full version which you would need?

1. Vagcom and VCDS are the same thing. It used to be Vagcom but changed its name to VCDS as it evolved.
2. Ross tech are the manufacturers so I'd stick with them. I'm 99.9% that no one else sells it "legally".
3. I use it for my VW T4 Transporter and it's invaluable to me in as much as I change my own timing belts and there's no other accurate way to set the timing. You can use a DTI but repeated complaints have proven it to not be accurate enough. I have also used it to activate my cruise control after fitting it retrospectively and to turn off the airbag light after messing. It's handy for looking at MAF figures and injector figures and other general fault coding. I suppose it depends on what you want it for.
4. VCDS Lite is a free to download, almost trial version. You purchase the correct lead off Ebay (there are lots of crappy ones that won't work and, for example my own lead won't work on my brothers van as he has a newer system (I forget the names OBD2 and so on)). The trial version gives limited use as I say but then you can contact Ross Tech and register your trial version, cost me $99, so £60+, and you'll get the full version. However, I have found that you can't then go around to every VAG vehicle. They restrict its use to the vehicle type you declare at registration. If you want the all singing one that works on all VAG vehicles you need to buy the genuine lead and programme from Ross Tech at a fair old price.
I believe there are snide versions about. You need to be careful though obviously about what you're plugging in and the potential damage that may occur.

Thanks for the feedback. Sticking to Ross Tech (or authorised distributor) seems to be a key point here (made clear elsewhere on the web too).

Some more research to do before I commit to anything. For example I'd want it to work on SWMBOs current 2007 VW, but then on newer vehicles over time as well.

I have a VCDS unit from Ross Tech that I don't use anymore, somewhere knocking around. I'll see if I can find it.

I have a ross tech vag com interface you can have for not very much but it is an old one and not sure it supports 57 plate cars. Ill have a check when im home next week

Thanks chaps, I'd appreciate you looking to see what you have.


Should have said before - U2U me with what you have and I'm happy to share email addresses for further discussion.

[Edited on 11/4/18 by nick205]