My wife owns an '01 Jetta Wolfsburg Edition 1.8T. It starts very weakly in the cold weather, so I wanted to try changing the battery to see if that helps. We are not the original owners of the vehicle. It did not come with an owner's manual, but I bought one off ebay. The manual says that changing the battery will likely put the factory stereo into Safe Mode and I'll need the security code to enable it again. I don't have this code. Will I definitely need it and is there a way to get this code looked up for free? Thanks.

 

i really don't know because i have a 05 gti, but i disconnected the battery to try to reset the ecu and when i hooked the terminal back up my radio worked without having to input the sercurity code.

 

I called our local VW guru and he had a clever scheme which worked. I used an emergency jump starter, the kind with alligator clamps like jumper cables, and clippped them to the battery posts before removing the old battery. So the system was never unhooked from a power source and no electrical items were reset during the swap.

 

hey that's pretty nifty, never thought about it that way. smart guy

 

I thought it was pretty clever, too. The guy at the shop apparently uses the kind that just plug into the cigarette lighter and that would have made it even more painless.

 

whoa... thats clever, have to remember that one thanks

 

Yeah man.... but about the battery, my dads was really weak but when we gave it a full charge it went back to normal. Maybe thats all yours needs???