Mercedes 722.9 VGS and EGS52 TCU Dumps: Cloning or Virginising a Used Conduit Plate

A W211 E320 CDI with the 722.9 gearbox starts in second, won’t shift, and stores P2767 (turbine speed sensor 2). A Vito W639 with the older 5-speed shows no gear engagement and its TCU, A0325453832, has water in the connector. Two different gearboxes, two different controllers, and the same question from the workshop: can the control unit be replaced without a dealer visit?

EGS52 and VGS: which one you have

The 5-speed 722.6 uses a separate transmission control unit, EGS52, mounted away from the gearbox (under the seat or in the footwell on a Vito, in the E-box on a W211 or W203). It’s an ordinary boxed ECU with a Mercedes A-number on the label; A0325453832 is one of the Vito W639 references. The 7-speed 722.9 (7G-Tronic) moved the electronics onto the valve body inside the gearbox: the VGS, vollintegrierte Getriebesteuerung, is the conduit plate with the speed sensors, the connector and the controller on one assembly, sitting in oil. When a speed sensor fails on a 722.9 you don’t replace a sensor; you replace the conduit plate, and every conduit plate contains a controller that is paired to the car.

There are three VGS generations (VGS1 on roughly 2004 to 2007 cars, VGS2 to about 2010, VGS3 after that) and they’re not interchangeable. The number is on the plate itself once the pan is off, and in Xentry under the transmission control unit’s hardware ID before you drain the oil.

Virginising versus cloning a used plate

A used conduit plate from a breaker carries the FBS pairing and the SCN coding of the donor. Fit it as it is and you’ll get no drive and an FBS fault in the transmission. Two ways forward:

1. Virgin, then online SCN. The used plate’s controller is written back to a virgin state (the FBS data and coding cleared, the unit appears ‘not activated’ in Xentry). Fitted to the car, it personalises itself to the EIS on the first ignition cycle, and then needs SCN coding written online through Xentry to match the vehicle’s gearbox variant and engine. AVDI, Autohex and VVDI all have VGS renew routines for VGS1 and VGS2; VGS3 is harder and on some sub-versions renewing isn’t possible with aftermarket tools. That’s the honest limit.
2. Clone. If the car’s old plate still reads, its EEPROM and flash can be transferred to a used plate of the same hardware version. The car sees its own controller, keeps its FBS pairing and its coding, and no online step is needed. This depends entirely on the old unit being readable; a plate that’s been sitting in burnt oil often isn’t.

The 5-speed EGS52 is simpler. It’s a conventional ECU, the EEPROM reads on the bench with a standard programmer (UPA, XProg, Orange5), and a used unit is either cloned from the old one or virginised and personalised the same way. SCN coding on EGS52 is needed less often, but check the variant coding after the swap.

What we supply

Dumps for 722.9 VGS controllers and EGS52 units: virgin dumps for a used plate, and full dumps by hardware number where you need a reference to compare your read against. Send us your read and the plate’s hardware and software numbers from Xentry, and we’ll tell you if a virgin or a clone is the sensible route. We can’t do the online SCN coding for you; only a Xentry with a Mercedes online account does that, and any independent who tells you otherwise is using a workaround that may not survive the next dealer visit.

What went wrong on the bench

A W204 C220 CDI had its VGS2 plate replaced with a used one that was renewed and fitted. It activated, SCN coding was done, and it still shifted badly, harsh from 2 to 3. The adaptation values were the missing piece: a virgin controller starts from zero and needs the adaptation drive cycle (Xentry has the routine, and the car needs a proper warm-up and a full set of shifts). Two hundred kilometres later it was fine.

Another one: a Vito W639 EGS52 was cloned by copying only the EEPROM from the old unit. The flash was a different software revision, so the clone had the right identity and the wrong shift logic. Full read, both areas, both units, before writing anything.

Gearbox controller dumps are in the gearbox category alongside the Mercedes-Benz pages, with the virgin dumps also listed under virgin files. For anything not listed, the request form with your read attached is the fastest way.