[MarkoM]

I really have too much free time... My friend says ordinary people just drive Corsa and then sell it.

This summer i got one 2005. C with a busted engine as a donor car for the climate control and some other bits and pieces. But a man has to eat so i was away from home for 4 months making some €€€. Now that im back in big style, the project can begin.
What is needed and what i took from the donor car...
-obviously, the control panel
-temperature sensors - 2 pieces (footwell vents and the upper "head" vents)
-Sunlight sensor
-(optionally) dash that has a perforation for a sunlight sensor (in between the windscreen vents), otherwise you need to cut
-fan controller. The old one (resistor type) is useless for ecc
-electric actuators for vents and heater flap, together with the microswitch.
-linkage for the actuators. Although similar, linkage of the manual control is not the same. Namely you will need lever of the heater flap and the windscreen vent. If you are a bit skilled and have some machining equipment, you may even adapt those of the manual control.
-(optionally) a complete ventillation box that already has holes for all these sensors and motors. It will make your life easier and harder in the same time. You will need to release the refrigerant and the coolant. There is no other way to replace it. If you don't want that (like me), then you need to drill holes for the sensors, and for the new (bigger) fan controller.
-(optionally) recirculation motor. There are two types of them (Hella and Bosch) as it looks to me. Apparently they are physically the same but not electrically
-wiring looms. There are two of them. The one with the blue connector goes around the sensors and motors. The one with the grey connector is connected to the main wiring loom of the dashboard. Speaking of which you may (like me) take the entire wiring loom of the dashboard. It will make your life easier, as you will "simply" disconnect the old loom from the BCM box and from all the switches, tacho and what not, and then connect the one from the donor car. Have in mind however that you may have different connectors for the radio and display depending on the year of yours and the donor car. Not a big deal if you are using aftermarket stereo however. Some other things may also be missing from the donor loom, so you need to think carefully. If you dont want to replace the loom then you need to re-wire the existing one. It is not "that" hard and the schematics are available on AutoData.

As you can see the list is quite big. If you want to source all these parts separately, it may be a tough and time-consuming job unless you find a complete set. The best thing-find a donor car at the scrapyard or elsewhere. It took me just a few hours, set of torx keys, 6-13 spanners and a ratchet, to remove everything from the donor car. And i never before removed a dash from the Corsa.

You will need opcom as well, to reprogram your bcm and ecu with the climate control instead of manual control.

Some pics...
Sunlight sensor location



All out - donor wiring loom in place and tested - so far so good.



Not exactly clearly visible, actuator motors fitted in place. They come right in place of manual controls, however the two above mentioned levers had to be changed. Also on a pic indicated a place where to drill a hole for the footwell temp sensors.


Right now i'm having some issues with the controller. It keeps the rear demister constantly on (cant be switched off for some reason) and the fan is constantly at the highest speed. Vent movements are sometimes a bit strange and the display sometimes flickers on and off. While it was still in the donor car, there was an error code in it indicating a faulty eeprom. Hopefully a new controller will do the trick.

When this rain stops there will be more updates. 🤓

 

[ozsubrosa]

Been a while since anyone's typed "make this a sticky", but I think this should, and I shall be following with interest.

 

[MarkoM]

Uninspiring cold and rainy day to do anything much.
Enabled ECC under BCM variant configuration.


Control panel is definitely gone. It shows me 56°C outside and 50°C inside. I don't feel that hot, and im more likely to believe the info display which shows me 15°C. Swapping the internal sensors does not change anything so they are ok.




And some better pics...
Motors and location of the microswitch. These motors come together in an assembly which is then mounted in place of manual controls. The assembly is held by two screws, the threads were already there in the ventilation box. Microswitch on the other hand is part of the wiring loom and cant be disconnected from it.



Two levers that need replacing, for windscreen vents and for heater flap.



Old levers...

 

[MarkoM]

More inspiring warm and sunny day yesterday. 🌞

When removing the looms i could not disconnect wires leading to the seatbelt pretensioners (or at least, i had no time or could not find a way) so i just cut them and now had to re-solder. Wires are orange in color with different colored stripes so you cant make a mistake.



Mounted the temperature sensors. I used an electric drill+dremel to make the slots. The upper vents had the place where and how you need to cut already marked.



And some comparison between re-circulation motors... They are physically the same, but with different part numbers, the pinouts of the connectors are not the same and my old motor did not respond to the ECC commands due to that. Perhaps it can be re-wired to work.
On the left is the one which came with the ECC and on the right is the one which was on my manual control.



Old climate loom out...had to cut it on a few places.



A slight headache. On the left is the new fan controller. On the right is the old one. The issue is that mounting holes are not even remotely the same. So i started enlarging the old hole in order to accommodate a new controller... The holes are located in the air outlet from the fan. They have to be in the path of air flow for the cooling purposes. I know for a fact that the resistor can get very hot, and judging by the size of the heatsink, the controller is not a joke as well.


That's all... for this week. I hope i did not overload the server with pictures. It is a great feature of the new forum.

 

[MarkoM]

The only thing done this last week (regarding this project at least)... I just cut the plastic housing off the donor windbox, cut the hole in mine with a dremel and glued it. Well you might think (and you might be correct) that this is not exactly the best solution as people commonly use this kind of glue (hot glue) for Christmas decorations but the glue i used is some super-crazy kind of glue. I tried to pull it really hard after gluing but the whole windbox moves together with it. Hopefully it wont melt during summer. If it does well... cable ties. This is the downside if you dont want to change the entire windbox.

One thing to be careful about is that evaporator is REALLY close to the hole and special care needs to be taken not to puncture it while cutting.

 

[ozsubrosa]

Apart from heat, vibration can be the undoing (see what I did there?) of glue joins. I used Gorilla Glue Gel to reattach the hinged side windows of my Tour back to the really small rubber-metal strips. It has held through the England-Malaga trip and back, and the Costa summer, so there is hope.

 

[MarkoM]

Apart from heat, vibration can be the undoing (see what I did there?) of glue joins. I used Gorilla Glue Gel to reattach the hinged side windows of my Tour back to the really small rubber-metal strips. It has held through the England-Malaga trip and back, and the Costa summer, so there is hope.

Im not a big fan of glues either but... in an absence of better solutions this one will have to do for now. If it fails there are always cable ties.

A bit of progress from today.
New (from scrap) control panel has arrived, but i'm still having some quirks such as - display and fan randomly switching on/off, cant switch off rear window heater, ac compressor apparently randomly switching on/off but only when not in ECO mode. As my boss used to say when everything is broken and not working - "hmm...i don't know, something's wrong here".
As liviu2004 pointed me, i made a mistake in thinking that changing the dashboard loom will be enough. The fusebox and the BCM box are wired differently as well - to be precise the rear window heater relay is wired differently. In case of manual AC, the relay is powered directly from the panel by pressing the switch. With the ECC the relay is powered by the BCM. There are more differences related to the relay which may affect my problem but tomorrow i will definitely compare fusebox i took out of the donor car with mine before writing anything here (schematics may not correspond to the actual condition).

A bit more explaining the differences between recirculation motors of manual and automatic AC. Those for manual AC have some kind of limit switches and electronics for reversing polarity inside them. Those for automatic AC have none of that. They probably work on a similar principle as electric windows - when the motor gets the flap in a final position it cant rotate anymore - current is increased which is sensed by the electronics and motor is stopped. My recirculation motor had the gears inside broken and it was rotating endlessly - so i combined two motors to make one functional.

Rebuild the spongy insulation around the vents as i got the old one in my face A hole in the dashboard where the sunlight sensor wiring is passing is also visible above the windscreen vents.



This hose is a cooling hose for a stereo which goes from the ventilation box to the stereo frame. In a donor ventilation box the hole was blanked so apparently it can do without it, but i decided to keep it. Cooling is always good. The only thing i had to do was to make it longer as it could not fit a new dashboard otherwise for some reason. Those ugly scratch marks - it was not me, i swear.


And finally dashboard is beginning to take its familiar form... My cat on the passenger seat likes it as well.

 

[MarkoM]

Disassembled the fusebox today to connect the rear windows defogger in a correct way. The problem is as described above that in manual ac, defogger relay is activated directly by pressing the switch. With ECC however it is activated from BCM. In both cases relay is controlled by connecting its ground (85), while +12V (86) is constantly supplied from F3 fuse (7.5A) in case of ECC, while in case of manual ac it is supplied from ignition live. The relay is double pole type, poles 30 and 87 are used for rear window defogger while poles A and B are used for side mirrors heating. 12V supply for rear window defogger (relay pin 30) is taken from F47 fuse (30A), and for side mirrors (relay pin A) from F14 fuse (7.5A).
A "feedback" signal wire from the defogger relay has to be connected to ECC panel. That wire is coming from the B pin on the relay.
As you can understand fusebox needs splitting.

First identifying whats what... i took out the defogger relay and tested whether there is continuity between F14 and A pin of the relay. There is continuity even though there was no fuse, it looks like they made the wiring for the heated side mirrors.


Next taking the BCM box apart. We will be working on the blue connector that connects dashboard loom (part of which is our ECC loom) with whatever is in the engine bay/fusebox and not going through the BCM.


And fusebox disassembled


Back to blue connector. That brown-white wire is going to 85 on the relay, previously it was connected to the switch on manual ac. But with the new dashboard loom in place, on the place of that wire should be feedback wire from the B contact on relay.


So what im doing is simply cutting brown-white and black-white wires, splicing them together and soldering to the black white wire coming from B contact on the relay. That way i have now feedback for the panel while retaining power for heated side mirrors. Remaining brown white wire is to be connected to B92 pin of BCM.


Finally i added a wire to the BCM connector and soldered the other part of brown-white wire to it. It is a bit tricky if you don't have a spare wiring loom from which you can take out spare connectors, pins and such.
BCM connector comes in two parts, first part (A) connects the stuff from inside the cabin to it, and second part (B) is for the engine bay, fusebox etc. So we are working on that second part here. Pin is number 92, they are marked on beginning and end of pin rows so by counting you can understand which one is it.


Now to work in the big fusebox... Relay pin 86 is connected to switched 12V (black wire) but i need it to be connected to constant 12V over F3 fuse. What i did was cut it from the switched 12V harness (multiple black wires connected together) and splice it into the wire going from F3. That fuse is used for info display, instrument panel etc.


Finally all put back and missing 7.5A F14 fuse placed .


So close (almost finished) but not that close. OPCOM apparently has some issues with programming variant configuration of BCM, ECC is not correctly programmed and im getting the error code "U2102 - (9) E-Bus More Controller on BUS Than programmed - Present" which causes random flickering of display.

So... who wants to retrofit climate control? 🥴

I guess i can throw some expenses on the paper.
-Donor car with busted engine ~ 200€
-2x towing ~ 54€
-New control panel ~ 30€

What i returned from the car
-Scrapyard paid me ~ 54€
-Sold fuel pump with installation ~ 40€
-Took out some 20L of fuel 😆 ~ 27€
-Small plastic bit for my gear shifter lever ~ 7€ at the scrap otherwise needs to be bought as a part of a whole set which is around 55€
-driver's door panel ~ impossible to find but i guess around 20€
-FM antenna ~ 10€
-Rear speaker ~ priceless

Of course i took out a lot of parts which may be useful later.

All together it cost me some 100 to 150 euros and a lot of time...and it is still not done.

 

[ozsubrosa]

A Modus Privilege, same colour as mine, is back on ebay (again!) with climate and other goodies my Dynamique hasn't got. I have to be honest, your thread has put a lot of realism into any "stick it in my car" ideas I may have had. Still enjoy reading this, though, and it's a real reference work.

 

[MarkoM]

Haha i was hoping to encourage! It was not easy, but nothing is impossible. I have to thank liviu2004 for advices he gave me, man is a legend. I used autodata for schematics but i dont think i can post them here - copyright issues. I can say that autodata has comprehensive electrical plans for Corsa and other vehicles based on Corsa.
TIS could be even better but i have never used it.

Today i completed the job, but proper activation still remains to be done. Any version of Opcom still refuses to cooperate but if i turn a blind eye on sporadic flickering of display it works. I just set it on auto - eco with temperature setting of ~22°C and the thing really works.

 

[Cal844]

The AC possibly needs activated from more than one module, check them all

 

[ozsubrosa]

Haha i was hoping to encourage!.. I just set it on auto - eco with temperature setting of ~22°C and the thing really works.

It's a great thread, MarkoM; I am the limited-skill-set type that wishes everything were like an auto-dimming mirror - just connect the two wires up. For people more able to roll their sleeves up, this is gold.
For my Modus, which is in Malaga all year round, setting an ideal temperature is what I would love to do.

 

[MarkoM]

The AC possibly needs activated from more than one module, check them all

BCM and ECU iirc. However bcm needs to "know" which kind of ac is it, not regulated, regulated (ecc) or not present. With non regulated ac instrument panel is connected to the BCM over CAN directly. With ECC on the other hand, instrument panel is connected to the climate panel over CAN and then climate panel is connected to the BCM over CAN as well. So there is the difference, in case of ECC, climate control panel is in between BCM and instruments.

Regarding ECU i think it just needs to know wheter ac is present or not. Anyhow BCM tells ECU to engage or disengage compressor clutch.

 

[MarkoM]

How to remove dashboard by Marcel Gulicher.

 

[OpComDiagnostics]

Are you using firmware 1.39 with your OpCom?

 

[MarkoM]

Are you using firmware 1.39 with your OpCom?

Hi, interface test tells me it is V01.99.

But anyhow, the problem is SOLVED. Luckily i took out BCM from the donor car (for those you-never-know situations). As i had the security code i just swapped the BCMs, used the old code to reset it and programmed it with my code. Then i had to change code index to 015 1 (same like it was in my original BCM) because otherwise remote keys did not work. Then i learned my existing remote and changed some stuff in variant config - such as comfort closing and welcome light - present. The trick with the donor BCM is that it already had ECC programmed so i did not have to do anything about it.

It becomes clear now that having a donor car is a good thing in these retrofittings, but also having liviu2004 on the line for suggestions.


This is how it all looks like, im not a particular fan of black color though.