UK-POLOS.NET - THE VW Polo Forum

Hello everyone, I am Sujoy, and I go by the handle Fluidicjoy on Team-BHP, Instagram and YouTube. I wanted to start a new thread to share the few modifications I make on our Polo 6R, which is the third VW car in our family. We had a MK5 Jetta 1.9 TDI (now Sold) which was the car I started learning about VAG stuff on. My father moved onto a Tiguan, and in 2020, we got a Polo 6R, which was refreshed in India with an EA211 1.0 TSI, which is a brilliant engine to drive.

I have made quite a few modifications on my Polo 6R with the help of a few good friends and forums I have been reading over the last few years and I have a strong feeling that the VAG retrofit community must be one of the largest in the world. I have a fairly active ownership thread on Team-BHP , but I wanted to start a thread here on UKPolo to share about my vehicle, with a greater focus on the technical side of things and also to humbly request help from the numerous VAG experts we have on this forum, if need be.

I like helping new VAG owners to upgrade and fix small things in their cars and I do so by making DIY videos on YouTube and replying to queries on Instagram and email from time to time, but I find it quite annoying when folks wish to learn more about upgrades purely from a commercial point of view and especially when they do not wish to put in their own time and efforts into research. Over the next few weeks, I will make it an attempt to share most of the work I've done on my Polo on this forum.
Here's a quick summary of my car
Polo 6R
Engine : 3 cylinder 1.0 TSI (DSHA)
Gearbox : 6 Speed Automatic (09G) by AISIN
Color : Sunset Red

fluidicjoy wrote: Sun Jul 31, 2022 1:25 am Hello everyone, I am Sujoy

Hello Sujoy!! welcome to forum.

Good initiative to share your knowledge, resources and retrofits in the forum. I hope your contributions will help others immensely.

Welcome to the forum Sujoy. Your car looks great - I really like the alloys and the colour of your car. Interesting to see that the Highline+ model in your country has GTI style bumpers and side skirts (we don’t have a Highline model in the UK).

I look forward to reading the updates on your discussion thread.

SRGTD wrote: Sun Jul 31, 2022 6:31 pm Welcome to the forum Sujoy. Your car looks great - I really like the alloys and the colour of your car. Interesting to see that the Highline+ model in your country has GTI style bumpers and side skirts (we don’t have a Highline model in the UK).

I look forward to reading the updates on your discussion thread.

Hi, thanks for the welcome! Yes, the Polo sold in India over the last few years came with the newer GTI style bumpers. This bumper was standard right from the Comfortline variant on the facelift. The R16 alloy wheels are called the Portago. I will try to keep sharing previous and upcoming updates to my car on this thread.

I am not a huge fan of the stock Goodyear tyres the car came with, but since I did not swap them out on the first day, I lost most of the resale value on them. I think I'll use them for a few thousand kilometres before considering a tyre swap. Here is a closer look at the Portago alloy wheels. I wish I had a closeup shot with the VW logo oriented correctly. This orientation does trigger my OCD quite a bit.
We also got the new tail-lights, which are quite pretty and have been upgraded by many folks on the forum.

patil wrote: Sun Jul 31, 2022 6:08 pm

fluidicjoy wrote: Sun Jul 31, 2022 1:25 am Hello everyone, I am Sujoy

Hello Sujoy!! welcome to forum.

Good initiative to share your knowledge, resources and retrofits in the forum. I hope your contributions will help others immensely.

Hello Dr. Patil, thanks for the welcome. I am thankful to this forum and the numerous passionate members who have been enriching my knowledge about these cars.

4K PDC to 8K OPS

The first major feature addition to my car was in the form of upgrading the stock 4K Parking Sensor system to 8K OPS. The most recent Polo 6R models in India came with 4 rear parking sensors, but there was no CAN Wiring in the stock wiring harness for OPS. We had retrofitted OPS to our MK5 Jetta and it is one of the most useful features to me. Sure, a car like a Polo, small in length can make do without a full fledged parking sensor setup, but it felt sorely missing in this car. So, a Parking Sensor Kit was procured with 4 Sensors and brackets.

I got the sensors painted from my Volkswagen dealership and I think for the most part they did a decent job.


The PDC module on the Polo 6R is on the Rear Right of the vehicle and had just two connectors at present. I have some plans to play with it and so I have not removed it from the car as of now. The CAN wiring is presently missing in the OPS connector and so some wires need to be removed and isolated from this connector to insert CAN Wires. The Team-BHP DIY Guide was very helpful during the OPS retrofit. This is what the stock connector looks like.

The CAN-High should go to T16/6 while the CAN-Low should go to T16/15 on the OPS Connector. Once everything is connected, the OPS module needs to be coded and it was pretty straightforward.

The one thing I did not like about many Chinese OPS kits is the quality of the OPS switch. Some switches fit slightly crooked, and there is a slight difference in the button shade, which again can trigger an OCD. What however does not trigger an OCD is the flush fitment of the OPS sensors which were cut by my friend Nikhil with the OEM Sensor tool.
The coding was an easy task in VCDS, but the same 8K OPS module leaves an un-identified module on VW's scan tool.

Maxidot Cluster
Initially, when I first drove the car during the test drive, it did not strike me how much I'd come to hate the existing cluster on the Polo. Sure, it does display quite a lot of useful information like the :- Consumption, Amount Refilled, Coolant Temperature etc - and to the delight of many, it could even do a needle sweep. However, I started losing my mind, when I couldn't realise the simplest of things like which door was staying open. On a side note, even though the Polo is our 3rd VW car, all of us, including my dad were having trouble closing the door with the right amount of force. On the Jetta and Tiguan, it would close with a certain force, which on the Polo, the first few months I'd end up closing my own door 2-3 times. I think this speaks volumes about the differences in build in two classes of PQ cars and a MQB car. So coming back to the stock and Maxidot Cluster, this is how they looks like in hand.

Installing the Maxidot Cluster was a fairly straightforward task. The old cluster was removed, and the new cluster (6RD 920 870 A) was installed in its place. The cluster had to be adapted online and the keys had to be paired. During the installation, I forgot to bring my second key and so I had to drive back to Nikhil to code my second key online. This gave me a chance to complete 1000kms and take a nice picture of the new cluster. I also gained a new metric "Oil Temperature"

Some additional features of the Maxidot Cluster can be enabled with newer hardware like a Discover Media Head-Unit. I will try and post about it soon. My favourite feature though is the improved Bluetooth phone support.
Another door which opened for me thanks to the Maxidot Cluster and BCM Max was Direct TPMS.

fluidicjoySujoy --

finally after read only access on team-bhp -- I can say -- hi and i have been keeping a eye on your updates on your thread there.
Many tempting mods. With a lot of details shared.

Welcome with your excellent car and even more excellent upgrades. It's good to see that the cluster came with the coolant pre-heated and a bit of fuel so you can drive away safely directly after install.

Thank you for sharing and good luck with the future mods, keep us posted.

ag69 wrote: Thu Aug 04, 2022 8:17 am fluidicjoySujoy --

finally after read only access on team-bhp -- I can say -- hi and i have been keeping a eye on your updates on your thread there.
Many tempting mods. With a lot of details shared.

Hello sir. I have gone through your thread on this forum a few times and you have made quite a lot of upgrades yourself.

iichel wrote: Thu Aug 04, 2022 9:59 am Welcome with your excellent car and even more excellent upgrades. It's good to see that the cluster came with the coolant pre-heated and a bit of fuel so you can drive away safely directly after install.

Thank you for sharing and good luck with the future mods, keep us posted.

Thanks for the welcome iichel! I'm a huge fan of your cars and have been in awe of your stylish and functional upgrades, from even before I joined the forum. Yes, turning the ignition during testing purged much needed fuel and coolant so I could drive back in lightning speed

OEM Flip Camera

This is one of those unique VAG specific quirks which I first saw on a Passat and on the Golf and really wanted to do on the Polo. Team-BHPian Graaja, who is also on UKPolo had done this on his car a few years back and shared it on Team-BHP and it is a very popular thread on the Indian forum. He was also kind enough to share the flip camera template so other could install the Flip Camera too.

Little did I know that it was master Ciclo who had shared the Flip Camera template with him and I only came to know about this when I got in touch with the master himself a few months later. However, the camera Graaja installed was an aftermarket flip-camera assembly. The Polo 6R to the best of my knowledge was never offered with a Reverse Camera from the factory, which is quite sad considering how popular the car is around the world. In India, almost every new budget car in 2020 had a decent helpful reverse camera but not the Polo 6R and so a usable Camera was definitely on the cards.

Most new Polo 6Rs being sold by the dealership were being offered aftermarket cameras which needed Delay Timers, CAN-Decoders and what not to work with the stock RCD330 and R340 Head-Units being offered in our country. These cameras all sat in the rear bumper and were just too LOW for the PoLOw. The Flip-Camera retrofit was no doubt known even then, but to the best of my estimation, only 1 in 500 owners was opting for a Flip Camera then. The sad part is, these after-market cameras had a low viewing angle, bad resolution and the cost was about $150, which was more than what an OEM Flip Camera retails for on Aliexpress. Because of these multiple reasons, I was not convinced to opt for a camera directly from the VW dealership, and so I ended up ordering the Flip Camera from Aliexpress and the seller even sent me an OEM Drain Pipe with a grommet in the end.

This camera needs a mounting ring to match the stock holes on the Polo 6R. Master Ciclo's Flip Camera guide which he made for the OEM camera he installed was quite helpful in the initial prep work for this installation. I used 2mm SS304 for cutting the camera ring, but a little thinner or thicker shouldn't harm as long as the screws are properly threaded in. Aligning the logo to be straight is also a challenge, and even a little offset does most certainly trigger an OCD Today, such a flip Camera is also available with the new style of Volkswagen logos which would be great to have, but I haven't had much luck with a newer front logo to match it.

So here's a quick summary of the installation.

1. Opening the boot trim.
2. Removing the old emblem.
3. Mounting the new flip camera.
4. Routing wires to and from the hatch.
5. Crimping and plugging in connectors and cables.
6. Coding the Headunit.
7. Testing all functions.
8. Routing the drain pipe.
9. Water leak testing the drain pipe.
10. Putting everything back together.

Tools I used for the task:

1. Torx T8 : Water Drain Pipe Bolts
2. Torx T20, T25, T30 : VW Specific Bolts on the Body, Camera etc.
3. Wire Strippers for clean wire ends.
4. Electrical Connector Pin Removal Tools - Might help sometimes.
5. Plastic Trim Tools
6. Vaseline/Silicone Grease to make passing wires a simpler affair.
7. Firm Wires/Fishing Wires to route cables through the car.
8. Zip ties
9. Tessa/ Insulation Tape for reinforcing harnesses
10. Luster Terminals if you intend to avoid soldering for joints

On taking out the hatch plastic trim which is held by two T20 Torx screws, this is what the stock boot release T2 connector looks like. This connector mates to a new T2 connector which makes this a plug and play fit.
Routing The Wire

The wires need to be routed all the way ahead to the head-unit and one wire also goes to the Fuse Power. Making use of silicon grease, and smartly opening a few tabs on the way is a good approach to smoothly route the wire into the car.

The wiring harness on my camera was a little messed up and I had to de-pin quite a few pins till the camera started flipping open (a multimeter helps), but for the most part, this should be a plug and play install. Notice the FAKRA connector for the OEM Video Signal (I hope the connector in context is indeed called a FAKRA style connector of some sort) and a 4 pin connector on this one which carries a Reverse Signal, Power and Ground to the camera. Brown on the camera connector was not Ground contrary to conventional logic
Radio Quadlock
On the RCD 330 and R340 Radios offered on the Polo 6R, the stock Quadlock harness does not include a Blue Block. T12/6 and T12/12 are the videos signals on this Radio connector and T12/6 is where the + Video Signal (White Gold Cable on my harness)goes while T12/12 is where the Ground connects.
On the Discover Media, the video signal has to share the block with the External Microphone signal cable. On the R340, just one byte has to be changed to enable the Reverse Camera view. Byte 3, bit 6 (Backup Camera installed) (40 became 44)
Wiring Connections

The camera needs a Fused Power source from the Fusebox. Most accessory cameras use +15 supplies and so this was naturally what I tried in the beginning. However, I had problems with the boot switch not working and the camera would not flip back in after taking the key out. Connecting to a +30 source fixed this issue. A few retrofitters I spoke to had not tried this and had accepted that the Camera won't flip back in without the key, but this in my opinion is a ridiculous trade-off and I couldn't have lived with it. The camera wiring kit had a fuse crimp which is not appropriate for the 6R and so it can be cut and connected to a Junior Power Timer or a Fuse-Tap joint depending on your preference.

Video Quality

The video quality isn't the best and is definitely no match to aftermarket cameras with 1080p SONY CCD sensors, but the camera itself is quite usable and helpful even in the night. A powerful reverse LED will improve night-vision, but I have not been unhappy with this camera. Drain Pipe

This is quite an important aspect of the Flip Camera install and failure to pay heed to water drainage, would lead to flooding in the Polo boot. Master Ciclo and Graaja had both accounted for this problem and drilled a drain hole in the hatch region to route the drain pipe. I did not want to drill my new car, just 3 months old, and fortunately, I found two body-coloured grommets along the boot sill, one of which was pried open to route the drain pipe
The plastic attachment for the drain on the camera is also a potential leakage site, and once everything was tightened down, I applied silicone gasket to all potential ingress points. My car has been through two years of monsoons now, and there has been no trouble of water or humidity inside. I also did some extensive water testing, and made a quick video on this camera. Just a short while after this video, I came to know of over 100 Polo owners (both newer and older cars) who got this installed on their cars. It was this video and the allied threads about this retrofit which suddenly made the Flip Camera a very desirable proposition in India again. I am glad I could inspire the amazing Polo community in some way

[youtube]https://youtu.be/zWbJ-nOlsbM[/youtube]

Moving ahead, it would really be nice if the OEM Flip Camera with Dynamic Guidelines would be compatible with the Polo 6R with a BCM Max, and perhaps our in-house experts could shed more light to whether or not it is possible, and if not, why not

Pulling the wires through the rubbers and tailgate pillars is a lot easier when you first pull a single, strong wire and attach all others to that.

Nice mods my friend, well done.
I always enjoy watching upgreats and mods.

giannis20vt wrote: Fri Aug 05, 2022 9:06 am Nice mods my friend, well done.
I always enjoy watching upgreats and mods.

Thank you! I will try and keep this thread updated with my activities and upgrades. Being a college student, I haven't really been able to make time for all of my passions.

iichel wrote: Fri Aug 05, 2022 8:16 am Pulling the wires through the rubbers and tailgate pillars is a lot easier when you first pull a single, strong wire and attach all others to that.

Yes sir, I fully agree and I lost some blood but sure learnt a good lesson

The stock hazard warning kit in the Polo 6R is built well, but slightly on the bulkier side and can take up some space in the boot and be a nuisance in the event you really need it and have a packed boot.Many Polo owners worldwide have upgraded to a slightly more premium hazard warning triangle kit, and when I found a good chance, I picked this one up. Fortunately, VW already had a place ready to host this hazard kit and it was perfectly plug and play

Since I had a Discover Media Head-Unit, I wanted to improve the sound signature a little bit and found a few pairs of A-pillar tweeters. It is fairly easy to find such tweeters on Aliexpress as well, and the quality of plastics is quite similar to the European ones.
In fact, there was a time when I was spoilt for choice as to which pillar to use, and the matter was only settled by two EXTRA AIRBAGS The wiring was fairly straightforward and the tweeters were attached in parallel to the front speakers.

Thanks to cost cutting, some markets don't get grab-handles with damper beads
Fortunately, these dampers can be retrofitted and this is fairly well documented on Team-BHP.
If you're lazy like me, then just find a set of grab handles with dampers