passat b6 stereo upgarde ?

**jonnychips** · 03-07-2009,02:54 PM

hi guys
just a quick one , Next week i will be picking up my passat 2.0 tdi highline 140 ps dsg with a luxury pack and 18 inch rims up , really looking forward to it too.
one question i was hoping to be able to upgrade the radio thats currently fitted for the sat nav head unit ! has any one done the upgrade themselves how did they find it ? is it actually worth it ?
ill post some pics of the car when i collect it midweek next week if anyone is interested .
many thanks jon

**hartry** · 03-07-2009,04:47 PM

yes lots of people have done the upgrade including myself and it's dead easy.

the head unit is plug and play. if you don't have a sat nav unit as standard you will have to add a gps antenna which for me meant removing the glovebox and fixing it to the underside of the dash, although i was removing the glove box to add the cd changer anyway.

if you have the highline mfd the satnav will integrate with that to show directions in the cluster, and in my case the car did not require coding with vag-com for this to work, but someone was posting on here recently who had added an rns510 that wasn't working with the mfd display - and one of the questions was whether the car needed coding or not, so this might be a possibility (i have an mfd2 by the way not an rns510 - although i'm tempted!)

good luck

**mhurer** · 03-07-2009,04:54 PM

I was looking at doing this to my B6 last month but decided I couldn't afford it. Basically there are two options, the older MFD2 (dvd based), or newer touch screen RNS-510, which is a 100 times better. I'm not too familiar with the MFD2, but I believe you can't play a CD whilst navigating, because the maps are on the DVD in the drive.

With the RNS 510 you get a hard-disk, which is used to store the navigation information as well as music etc, you get a slot for a SD memory card, as well as a DVD/CD drive. It is touch screen and a very nice piece of kit. Installation is supposed to be a straight swap, with the antenna hidden behind the dash. Cost can be anything from £500 if you do it yourself to £1100 from some pro shops. Just search on ebay for RNS 510 and you'll see quite a few.

The unit is best coded to your car using VAG-COM or something similar. Some outfits on ebay will do this for you as part of the installation and it's best to avoid those installers that claim it is not necessary. If you do not code the unit into the Car you will not notice anything wrong and it should work fine, but there will be fault codes generated, which will be picked up at service time.

Good luck and well worth a look.

**hartry** · 03-07-2009,05:01 PM

mhurer's comparison of the head units is correct, and is partly why i added the cd changer - with the mfd2 you need to leave the nav dvd in the head unit all the time.

agreed, there will be fault codes on my car as it has not been coded for the satnav or cd changer, or bluetooth module either for that matter, although vw never mentioned anything at first service.

the install is so easy i would definitely recommend diy versus getting it professionally installed!!!

**jonnychips** · 05-07-2009,08:38 PM

many thanks guys for all your advice , one more question the head unit thats in the passat highline as standard states that its mp3 , does that mean it plays mp3 discs or just that its mp3 player compatible

**hartry** · 05-07-2009,08:47 PM

means it reads data cds with mp3s burned on them

**jonnychips** · 05-07-2009,08:53 PM

thanks for the info

**GeoffW** · 06-07-2009,09:34 AM

Originally Posted by jonnychips

many thanks guys for all your advice , one more question the head unit thats in the passat highline as standard states that its mp3 , does that mean it plays mp3 discs or just that its mp3 player compatible

As Hartry says it plays MP3 CDs, with track information. I have one in the garage going spare....

My 2007 Passat Sport came with the option of the RCD500, which is a 6CD MP3 changer all in the head unit. This is now sat in the garage as I took the plunge and got myself an MFD2 last week

I'm surviving without a CD for now, will probably save up for an XCarLink.