CADDY2K.com

Hey guys!
So this is going to be a short thread dedicated to our Caddy.
We were searching for a car that could do it "all". No kids (yet), we just wanted to transport ourselves, eventually two bicycles, maybe sleep in the car, but also wanted to be able to drive the car daily without having to worry about ruining the diesel engine.

I was dreaming of T6 but I felt it is just too big and too expensive as our first and currently only car, and getting that one in TSI was close to a miracle.
Then we made conclusion that we buy mid-sized van like Kangoo, Caddy, you name it. I especially liked Grand Kangoo due to its variable interior seats, it would be a new car and all that, but once I got to a dealership, they really pissed me off. The car was not available anywhere, interior infotainment did not make a good impression and neither did the dealership, not giving us any reasonable offer in "I can not do anything, it's the Renault policy" style. Since we did not want to spend all the money for the car we had not even seen, we decided to go for used one. Out of all that was available, I liked Caddy the most. It is rather old fashioned, but I also read it as "proven by time" and to me it also represents the good old "form follows function" VW Vans style that tends to disappear.

So I started searching for a Caddy. Wanted Maxi, TSI and DSG, which turned out to be non-existent vehicle in this country (CZ) where everybody is obsessed with diesels and low fuel consumption. So I had to go mobile.de and in the end we found seemingly perfect Maxi with 34k kilometers, registered 9/2020. Car really looks beautiful, has nearly all it can have and there are only subtle mods I would like to do, nothing major. Not planning to build a stanced show-van

Here are some photos

What do I want to change then? As said, just minor finishing touches.

- Steering wheel with DSG paddles. I have a feeling that D is often under-reving the engine, especially around 50 km/h where it often just throws in 5/6th gear and I can feel the engine shaking. S on the other hand tends to rev a bit too much in weird situations when that is not needed. I will ask local service if DSG has any "learning" feature that could be wiped, but the paddles would be cool. One of the few OEM features that the car does not have.
- Tailagate opening from the inside. We would really miss that sleeping in the van and I already am in progress of doing that. Will post the steps and parts I am using to make it look as OEM as possible.
- Speakers upgrade. That would not hurt anything would it. I have read something about Vibe plug&play set etc.
- Noise insulation. The engine is very quiet but in higher speeds, the airflow around the car becomes very audible. Maybe that could help a bit. Low priority though.
- Wheels. I want to get second set of 17" Canyons for winter. Initially I wanted to convert the car to 18" Touran Marseille but I do not want to go through the hassle of getting it approved and written into the documentation etc. Also Marseille wheels are 7J so I would need wider tires and god knows what.

Very nice indeed and a good choice. I have an Acapulco blue Maxi Life 2.0 diesel DSG and love it, also similar to you no kids (well grown up) and with the 2nd and 3rd of seats removed it's huge inside. Easily enough room for two bikes and a weeks worth of camping equipment.

My thread is here if you are interested, https://caddy2k.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=57550

juliang71 wrote: ↑Sat May 31, 2025 7:49 pm Very nice indeed and a good choice. I have an Acapulco blue Maxi Life 2.0 diesel DSG and love it, also similar to you no kids (well grown up) and with the 2nd and 3rd of seats removed it's huge inside. Easily enough room for two bikes and a weeks worth of camping equipment.

My thread is here if you are interested, https://caddy2k.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=57550

Hi Julian! I have actually seen your thread already. It helped me quite a bit, especially the photos you made with interior trims stripped. I have observed there how the inside of the tailgate looks like which inspired me to make a tailgate opening from the inside of the car. I just finished that so I will post some pics later, as it might be interesting to someone.
BTW Acapulco blue was my number one preferred color, but no car in that color was available back then. This red though... I love it too! Did not even know it existed until I saw the car on mobile.de. Now it is 50/50 Acapulco/Fortana. Blue is more manly though

Blue is more manly? pfft.

Anyway, great looking van in the second best colour available, looks in great condition as well.

It's funny you should have one in Fortana Red as I went to look at one before I got my Acapulco Blue. Both were VW Caddy Maxi's and at the same dealership. The Fortana Red was newer and had less mileage but the paintwork on one side wasn't good. I think the previous owner had rose or thorn bushes on one side of their drive!!

I then spotted the Acapulco Blue one and just new it was the one, a test drive later and that was it. I was the owner, a few more miles but still low for the year and the paintwork is excellent. Happy days.

Our Caddy received its first scratches yesterday. And it was not out fault.
I noticed it when I got to the car, leaving work. Rear bumper was clearly touched. So I checked the car standing next to me, and it was apparently guilty. So I left passive aggressive note behind his wiper and indeed in the evening got a call.
You would not guess that - the guy did not notice anything (that seems strange to me, there was a lot of space between us), was pretty nervous and told me this was his second drive. He might be lying, but I think he was not. The car even had "beginner" label on it. So while I was pretty pissed, I could not be mad at him. I checked if the parking sensor works, it seems to be OK, and when I cleaned off most of his shitty paintwork, it is not too visible, so I just left it be.

The parking lot was half empty though. That is also why I did not care too much about my alignment. He could have just parked 10m farther from the entrance where there was literally no one, just tumbleweeds rolling across the parking lot. It is what it is.

juliang71 wrote: ↑Tue Jun 03, 2025 8:29 pm It's funny you should have one in Fortana Red as I went to look at one before I got my Acapulco Blue. Both were VW Caddy Maxi's and at the same dealership. The Fortana Red was newer and had less mileage but the paintwork on one side wasn't good. I think the previous owner had rose or thorn bushes on one side of their drive!!

I then spotted the Acapulco Blue one and just new it was the one, a test drive later and that was it. I was the owner, a few more miles but still low for the year and the paintwork is excellent. Happy days.

I like the blue, it is really nice. We had a little more problems finding the right car. This one was actually 5th one in the row that we investigated. All previous ones either had any damage in the past or the dealer had the price set too high and did not wanna let go. We had a guy helping us with the purchase in Germany but all the dealers seem to be slightly bullshitting you. "We can not give you discount, people call us all the time and ask about this car, we can not even reserve it for you for one day" and then you see it still standing there half year later. Maybe because the price is too high. But they won't reduce it because people call all the time.
In the end we were lucky though. Still took decision under pressure, because the dealership again went "bla bla we have potential buyer coming tomorrow bla bla we really think the car will be gone tomorrow bla bla" but the car looked so nice that we did not hesitate.

Ukrutony wrote: ↑Thu Jun 05, 2025 8:11 am Our Caddy received its first scratches yesterday. And it was not out fault.
I noticed it when I got to the car, leaving work. Rear bumper was clearly touched. So I checked the car standing next to me, and it was apparently guilty. So I left passive aggressive note behind his wiper and indeed in the evening got a call.
You would not guess that - the guy did not notice anything (that seems strange to me, there was a lot of space between us), was pretty nervous and told me this was his second drive. He might be lying, but I think he was not. The car even had "beginner" label on it. So while I was pretty pissed, I could not be mad at him. I checked if the parking sensor works, it seems to be OK, and when I cleaned off most of his shitty paintwork, it is not too visible, so I just left it be.

The parking lot was half empty though. That is also why I did not care too much about my alignment. He could have just parked 10m farther from the entrance where there was literally no one, just tumbleweeds rolling across the parking lot. It is what it is.

harsh luck bud, not good.

I will never understand the penchant of people to park even closer to a workplace / Gym / store or whatever when its far easier to park literally 10 yards further away and not inconvenience anyone, including yourself.

Since I am not allowed to classified forum sections, I will post a little info on a tiny "project" I did. So...

Tailgate opening from the inside

Since we intended to sleep in the car, we realized it might be annoying not to have the possibility of opening the tailgate from the inside, so I started thinking what to do with it.
In juliang’s Acapulco thread I saw a pic of the tailgate stripped where it was visible that only two wires lead to the opening button. Did a little research and it turns out that the opening button apparently just serves to connect a wire and that signal unlocks the tailgate. Plan was clear - add one more button to unlock the door on the inner side of the door.

Provided you want to place the opening button in the middle of the door, there are two potential locations - (1) above the “bus handle” and (2) below it.
I decided to place it above, very close to the outer opening button. You do not have to push that far and the button will be more accessible even if we had some kind of elevated bed inside of the car. The ”bus handle” won’t hang over it. On the other hand, when placed close to the floor, there is more space inside of the door. The location I picked already has the original button in there with some cables. Lower location is totally empty inside the door.



I bought original opening button 5N0827566T and metal housing 1T0827229A



I did not want to interrupt the original loom of the car, so I decided to make myself a spliced “wire extender”.
After opening the tailgate I checked the connector part number and bought some more of them from our Chinese fkin friends from AliExpress, because originals from VW parts dealer were scandalously expensive for a piece of plastic.
Male connector is 1J0973119 and female 1J0973332. When buying the parts from Ali, do not buy the connectors with wire already in, it is too thick. Instead just get 0,5mm2 wire, because crimp terminals provided with connectors can take two of those, so you can just splice it without any issues.
I bought here https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007 ... 19cM6g8ls (the link will probably get outdated someday)



I made one end 10cm long and the end going to a new button 20cm, so that I can remove it comfortably when disassembling the door cover. Finally wrapped it with a textile tape.



Then I was fiddling around with exact location in order to avoid interference with already placed cabling and outer handle. In the end I placed the button exactly in the middle between wiper cover and the “bus handle”.
Took the door cover and cut a hole exactly 42x101 mm. I made it slightly smaller and then was filing it so that the button sits snug. This is not necessary though, since the metal housing should hold it in place.



A little issue arised. The door cover is thicker than metal, what I expected, but the outer button placement apparently has a few mms offset inwards (is not mounted into planar sheet of metal, but there is an indentation around it), so the metal housing was not fitting perfectly, in fact interfering with the connector, so I had to cut a bit off.



Now it is easy to pull the connector out. Furthermore, as you can see, the two threads are a little too short, but I think it will work. A little Loctite thread locker could maybe help. It was finally time to put it back into the car.



Connector labelled as (1) did previously go into the outer button. Instead I connected my extender to it, shorter end of extender (2) goes to outer button and longer end (3) to the inner button.



I also moved moved the wiper cable holder out of the way to the left. Untaped it from the cables and retaped it elsewhere.

Now it looks as if it belonged there, doesn’t it?

that's a great and very detailed mod.

Looks OEM as well which is always the best way to make it look.

there seems to be more doors than tailgates on caddys so its nice to see the tailgates get some love!

So we are now back from first proper holiday with the car in the Alps and I am very satisfied except for a few minor things.
We realized that the front right co-driver seat is the foldable version (it can fold forward like the backseats do), which means it can not be laid back enough to sleep on it comfortably. My GF therefore could not sleep on it and we had to make a space for her in the trunk, which was slightly impractical. Thank god she is not too tall
Does anybody have resource for the part numbers of whole seats, for I wish to know what the potential swap would cost? I tried searching through 2nd hand offers on some sites selling parts, but no success yet. I have the "leather"/alcantara version that comes with highline. Maybe I will create dedicated thread for this question.
Second observation is that D drive mode tends to under-rev constantly while S mode tends to rev up when I would already shift. This happens mostly when driving low speeds, but I am planning to solve this by installing wheel with DSG paddles. Already got one, will get to that in another post.

Adding a few pics to light up this plain text

Hey all!
So I finally found time and courage to swap the steering wheel. For anybody else planning to do just a plain swap (not a real retro-fit to the vehicle that did not have MFSW) here are the findings.



I can confirm that if your car already has MFSW and DSG, there is no coding required.
My Caddy is 1.4 TSI DQ200 Highline spec and after wheel swap, shifting was immediately available.

My Caddy was originally equipped with 2K5 419 091 A E74 wheel with ACC.

Genuine Caddy MFSWs with DSG paddles exist in couple versions.
Top-level wheel with paddles and ACC I needed is 2K5 419 091 C EGZ

Since I could not find it anywhere I got 2K5 419 091 B ZPM (the steering wheel body is identical, just the buttons were different, without ACC) to which I assembled separate buttons and black bezel. Both buttons and bezel I sourced at Wibutec.de. Communication with them was a little bit difficult but in the end I got what I needed.



When screwing buttons onto the bezel, PT screws 2x8mm with TX8 head are used. However, for the outermost positions (closest to the wheel edges), screws have to be slightly shortened to cca 6mm.



ACC buttons part number is 2K0 959 442 A ICX and bezel is 6C0 419 685 B.
All DSG-equipped wheels for Caddy come with grey stitching (moonrock grey)

The final cost was cca 600 Euro. From what I've seen buying from official suppliers the cost would be well above 800 Euro. If anyone is interested, my older wheel without paddles is for sale, in very good condition. I will probably make a dedicated thread for that purpose and link it here.

For the absence of better way (I have not been authorised to use For sale forum section) I am announcing here that my previous wheel with ACC (2K5 419 091 A) is for sale, price 300 Eur, not fixed, I am not too sure how much should that cost (just saw a few offers where they wanted 300 Eur for obviously very worn items that were shite compared to mine), just give me a message and we hopefully sort it out. Just 40k driven, very good condition IMHO.

Unfortunately I am located in EU so I prefer shipping inside of EU, UK should be possible though.
Even more unfortunately since I have not been verified yet, you can not PM me here.
Maybe try to PM me on Messenger, since my profile is getting shitload of spam on Messenger anyways so I just reveal it @antonin.pas

Some more photos of the wheel here: https://www.kleinanzeigen.de/s-anzeige/ ... 6-223-6441