Finally got to use my Carista to fix some of those little annoying things with the T6.1. Bought it 2 years ago when I got the van. But kept having to bring the van back to the dealer for warranty work and didn’t want to mess with the OBD settings until we got the van to a good place where everything was fixed and working well.
For those not familiar with OBD and the Carista:
- The Carista reader itself:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BBS73F6J?tag=vwcalifornia-21
- list of settings you can tweak:
https://carista.com/en/supported-cars/vw/transporter/t6-1
Settings I’ve changed:
Ding when key is left in ignition -> off
Finally. Stops that irritating and completely useless ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding when you’re opening or closing the pop-up roof and someone opens one of the doors.
Auto fold mirrors via -> single click
For some incomprehensible reason, the mirrors on the T6.1 Ocean have the ability to fold automatically when you lock the door but they don’t as standard. Every time you lock the van, you have to then press and hold the locking button to get the mirrors to fold.
This setting fixes that. Mirrors now fold automatically every time the van is locked. As they should.
Scandinavian DRL: daytime running lights activate taillights and parking lights -> Yes
For some reason, in Ireland and the U.K., daytime running lights are only at the front. Tailgate lights aren’t on by default during the day. Always found this odd as it makes it look like your lights are broken. And it’s the tailgate lights that you really want to be on all the time anyway as they make a huge difference in seeing the car in front of you in poor visibility daylight conditions.
This setting fixes that. Daytime running lights now switch on both your front and tailgate lights.
Refuel quantity in MFD -> Enabled
This adds the “Refuel quantity” to the list of driving metrics you can choose to display on the dashboard display (see picture). Not exactly an essential feature but still useful for those pumps that require pre-payment. Quantity is displayed in 5L increment. Bit odd that this feature is there but hidden by default.
Auto-unlock doors when shifting into park (P) -> Yes
Still on the fence on this one. By default, your doors remain locked until you remove the key from the ignition. Which is annoying when you stop for a few seconds to pickup someone from the side of the road. Always ends up being a kerfuffle where the person you’re picking up tries several times and fails to open the (still locked) door, you don’t really know why it’s not working, then remember that the doors are still locked, panic-look for the unlock button, find it, unlock the doors then try to gesture to the person outside (who has given up by now) that they should try again and it that should work.
This fixes this. As soon as you put the van in P, the doors unlock. But it means that when you put the van in P when waiting at a traffic light or stuck in traffic, the doors also unlock. Which is loud and annoying. So not sure. I might revert that one.
What I couldn’t fix
I couldn’t change the minimum speed at which the auto-headlights activate. Other cars let you configure this but not the T6.1 Transporter it seems - the option is not there.
That’s really annoying. Auto-headlights only activate when you drive at 60km/h or more. Which makes it fairly useless on small winding country-side roads, unless you drive like a complete madman. I’ve no idea why this limit is there. Really wish I could lower it to 20km/h.
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