So the 2009MY 997.2 with 6spd gearbox did not come with any options for heated wheel, nor multifunction. My goal was to get heated wheel, but while I was in there I wanted to fix the issue of not being able to blank the PCM screen in one click and having volume and phone controls closer would also be good so I added multi-function.

So the car, a MY2009 997.2, built in October 2008, already had heated seats.

The parts that were purchased were:

• MY2011 steering wheel and new airbag (design is different: horn is now the airbag, rather than silver plastic surround): heated wheel + MF
• Clock spring mechanism (to be able to pass the electrical signals through)
• New steering wheel controller

For a manual car, this is a drop in replacement. For cars with PDK, possibly with flappy paddles, there might be some issues (check with Suncoast).

Install at dealer was straight forward in one visit, no added parts were needed. The thicker wheel (XPA sports wheel) came off and the new wheel went on. I opted for the black trim rather than the painted silver... it goes better with the look.. not much else painted silver inside and I'm not a fan of the bling.

The install required the obvious installation of the physical pieces, then the coding of reading the old controller coding, once installed, coding the new controller to the car, coding of the PCM to make it mutli-function wheel aware, coding the gateway. (so presumably the heated wheel feature doesn't require additional coding nor the phone).

Because there is no 'keyed top' notch on the wheels, the install of the new wheel, because of manufacture, resulted in a slightly off-center wheel position, so top dead center steering resulted in a toe angle of 0.19deg. Thus an alignment was required, but as its 2.5 years and 16k miles into the car, it was probably good to get one (though paying $200 for an alignment isn't my cup of tea, when an alignment on a VW Golf, which also has 4 wheels, can be had for much, much less, albeit through a Porsche dealership).

Left: old wheel - XPA sports wheel MY2009 6spd (997.1 style), plastic silver surround is horn, non-heated
Right: new wheel MY2011 6spd (997.2 style), heated + multifunction; airbag is horn



Costs:

• Parts: ~$2,000
• Labor: $300 (install of wheel and coding)
• Labor: $200 (alignment all around)

Then if you sell of the original wheel and airbag you get some money back:

• Original XPA wheel sold = -$800
• Original Airbag sold = -$475

So total cost of the wheel upgrade ~ $1,250 - . It was done in one day (install) but the selling off the original bits took some months to wrap up.

I'm now looking forward to a friggen cold winter so I can enjoy all the warmth of a heated wheel in the Targa. The older wheel was a bit thicker and softer (more padded) and the thread to sew it shut was softer than the new wheel, but in normal use you don't touch the stitching and I can give up the thicker padding for the heated functionality.

As a side note, if anyone is interested in a slightly used, thicker padded XPA 997.1 style manual gearbox steering wheel in stone gray (with airbag): PM me.

 

Minok,

Thanks for this great post! Already very detailed report but I have a question on that. I'm in the same position with my '09 C2S and I want all black new steering wheel. Suncoast said I need the steering wheel, a new airbag (which makes sense reading your post) and the steering column control, which I think you refer to as steering wheel controller.

Can you clarify what that steering wheel controller is?

Would you say that overall the additional labor resulting from installing a MY'10+ steering wheel was little?

I'm seriously considering doing the same thing after reading your post.

Thanks for sharing!

 

Love the heated function, don't think I can ever have a car that I drive in the winter without it!

 

The steering wheel controller is a small electronics module that plugs into the steering column and I think it sits between the signal lines that come off of the steering wheel (via the slip ring) and handles them and puts them on the wiring that goes into the car's network (to the PCM and other stuff) (my guess). In my case, as I had no multifunction or steering, the controller swap added the hardware to support the multifunction buttons and the heated wheel button thats on the back of the wheel.

So if you are adding a functionality that wasn't there before, you may well need the matching controller to go with it.

I'm curious what your current wheel is, and why that doesn't require a new slip-ring assembly (the plastic/wire rotating assembly that provides a way for the electrical signals to get form the rotating steering wheel and its buttons, out the back to a fixed point on the steering column) ?

On the labor front, I had the dealer do it as they would have to enable the systems with the PIWIS system anyway via a code from Stuttgart and/or settings I wouldn't be able to do. They had no problems with getting it configured.

Paying the $300 for the professionals with some experience AND the proper manuals, to do this including de-energizing the old airbag, getting it pulled out and installing the new.. well worth it for me. If you need a new enable-code from Stuttgart put in to turn on the functions you'd likely get charged some time and have to make a trip to the dealer anyway... so for me the incremental cost for them just doing the whole thing with me bringing in the parts was a no brainer. Just clear it with your local dealer that they will do the install with your supplied parts BEFORE you buy the parts.

 

Nice post with great detail. I have recently done a steering wheel swap similar to this one and now the horn doesn't work. The old wheel was the same as yours with the horn on the silver airbag surround and the new one is slightly different but appears to use the same airbag module as your new one, i.e. you push the circular airbag for the horn. So this looks horn and airbag-wise identical to your swap. Did you have any problems with the horn? Any rewiring required? Did the controller upgrade sort it out?

Any help greatly appreciated!

Paul

 

I dropped of to the dealer the wheel, airbag, slip ring and controller all at once, knowing they would be needed (since I came from a non-heated, non-multifunction wheel).

The tech didn't indicate any issues with the horn, presumably the new wheel has the horn switch installed in it and that plugs into the slipring.

Did the installer forget to plug in the horn? I wold think that the plug form the wheel to the slipring for transfer of the horn signal would be the same, regardless of how the steering wheel closes that horn switch (be it by a switch activated by depressing the airbag, or by a switch activated by depressing a ring), so I would think that the controller and slipring don't play into the horn pass-through.. But then I'm not designing the cars.

 

Thanks for the reply. I fitted the wheel myself. Slightly regretting that now! The new steering wheel plugs into the steering column socket no problems. However, the horn does not work. On investigating the two steering wheels it looks like the old one operates the horn by closing a switch. And the new one is totally different - looks like it operates the horn by OPENING a switch. If I'm right about that then maybe the wiring behind the steering column socket needs to be different. Anyone know for sure?

 

Well, if the logic of the horn switch is reversed, then it is entirely possible that a new steering wheel controller is needed to account for that reversed logic.

 

I was told that you need a new steering controller module. The tech will download the data from the old controller, install the new controller module and upload the old controller's data to the new one. All thru the PIWIS.
With all that being said, I did a 2012 heated wheel upgrade to my 2005 and everything works. horn and even the heated wheel. All that without going to the dealer. I installed the steering wheel and airbag by myself

 

joel, did you have to but a new control module?
do you have the part # by any chance?

nvm
i found it,
if anyone else needs it here it is
997-613-289-01

 

Minok can you provide PN's for everything you ordered to make this work. I'm looking to go from a 997.1 Multifunction to a 997.2 multifunction for a manual.

Side note I had my dealer install both a 997.2 and 991 multifunction on my car, everything worked with the exception of the multifunction portion of it, they did illuminate but no functionality

 

subscribed

 

Hi raffi!

sorry I missed the post.... I never installed the steering wheel control module. it worked fine since the beginning... (i know, weird!)

 

Bump, anyone have PNs of what is needed to this multifunction swap?

 

I swapped a heated multifunction wheel for the OEM non–heated multifunction wheel in my 2012 GTS with heated seats and 6 speed. Pretty simple: had to install a new clock spring and controller followed by recode.