The long road home - Intro and an epic road trip all for a car.

[Ponto]

Re: The long road home - Intro and an epic road trip all for a car.

red sidemarkers?

Nope side markers were taken care of a long time ago!

[Danaldson]

Re: The long road home - Intro and an epic road trip all for a car.

Oh then led tails

[Ponto]

Re: The long road home - Intro and an epic road trip all for a car.

Oh then led tails

Haha yup!



Buddy in Florida is sold them to me for a steal! Met the guy when I picked up my car, lives in a nice gated community in Orlando. A3 is his daily, Porsche his fun car, wife had to Mercedes. Who knew a university professor could do so well.

Wanted to get Euro's but the difference is so minimal and the price was so right I couldn't say no!

I can always swap my outer's for euro's later on too.

[Ponto]

Re: The long road home - Intro and an epic road trip all for a car.

Ebrake handle slides right off they say, it will be fun they say... Fck that noise.

1. Retainer clip completely removed... handle would still not budge.



2. Old handle is garbage, time to do what it takes to get it off.



Destroyed!!

But I won.






No idea what the hell was holding it on. So much for a 5 minute job jesus.

Also my car is dirty, need to clean it!

[Ponto]

Re: The long road home - Intro and an epic road trip all for a car.

Upon further investigation of my hold handle, it looks like it was glued.

[PRY4SNO]

Re: The long road home - Intro and an epic road trip all for a car.

Still tho... looks veddy nice!

[Ponto]

Re: The long road home - Intro and an epic road trip all for a car.

haha thanks, glad to have to swapped out and the new one put on properly.

[stef2.7t]

Re: The long road home - Intro and an epic road trip all for a car.

Love the stitch detail!

[Ponto]

Re: The long road home - Intro and an epic road trip all for a car.

Love the stitch detail!

Just need a matching flat bottom steering wheel! Haha next year maybe. Done on the inside once the switches are in. Then next year steering wheel and Oem Nav possibly to complete the update to 2012 interior bits.

Sent from my Igloo

[stef2.7t]

Re: The long road home - Intro and an epic road trip all for a car.

I need to find me a decent RNS-E

[Ponto]

Re: The long road home - Intro and an epic road trip all for a car.

I need to find me a decent RNS-E

Me and you both!

Edit nm it's gone :(

[Ponto]

Re: The long road home - Intro and an epic road trip all for a car.

Holy shiet. Fastest USPS Shipping I have ever seen. My tailights were shipped on the 27th. Got here today!



ooh shiney



Now I just gotta get them installed... with someone with VAG-com so I can switch the programming to LED's and not get a bulb out error.

[stef2.7t]

Re: The long road home - Intro and an epic road trip all for a car.

I got the Vag-com if you got the instructions.

[Ponto]

Re: The long road home - Intro and an epic road trip all for a car.

I got the Vag-com if you got the instructions.

I can get the instructions!!
need to splice the inner light LED's in the license plate as well so I may have to pick up some wire cutters and heat shrink.

[Ponto]

Re: The long road home - Intro and an epic road trip all for a car.

Got the full DIY. Will have to take pictures to go with it.

Remove the outside tail lights:

Remove the small panel on the plastic behind the tail lights. Its about the size of 2 or 3 quarters. Inside you will see what looks like a black long plastic nut with a flat head screwdriver slit in the middle of it. Unscrew it with a small flat head. Not too small or you will strip it. MAKE SURE YOU DONT DROP IT IN THE PANEL!!!

Then remove the outside tail lights by prying outward on the inner shell of the tail lights. It will just pop out as the outside of the tail light is just held in with 2 grommets once you take the screw out.



Installing Outside Tail Lights:

Just reverse the process and pop in the outside lights. I attached the dongle that came with the tail lights and tucked it in the bottom where there is extra room below the tail lights.



Installing the Inner Tail Lights:

Remove 2 small panels inside the hatch behind the tail lights. These are the size of about a large fist. Then remove the silver nut off the long bolt. 10mm is the size. You dont have to take it all the way loose, just about to the end and the tail light loosens up and comes out. Then the tail lights kinda wiggle out and are hooked around the outer edge of the hatch. Once these are removed you will have to also remove the entire inner panel off the patch. If you look up in the area which you would grab to close the hatch, there are 2 torx screws inside of there. Once you remove these 2 screws you can pop off the rest of the panel, as it is held in with metal in rubber groments.

Once the inner panel is removed, you can install the new tail lights. In reverse of how i described, they just lip around the outer edge and push in. I found it best to hold in the tail light as i tighted the 10mm nut. Insure it catches the edge of the car to tighten down.

There is a wire hanging off the dongle on both inner tails. These needs to be connected to a 12v line. The easiest one to get to that everyone uses is the one going to the license plate light. There are 4 wires going to this light. Use the light Purple (or Violet) with the line on it.


One of the wires you will need to extend and probably both with be ideal. Then dongle barely reaches on the drivers side and the passenger side is about 5 inches short. This is because the License plate light plug is a little to the left of center on the hatch. I just cut back the tape covering the line about 4 inches worth. Attached the drivers side connector. Then extended the passenger side connector about 8 inches just to have extra. I found that the drivers side one was very tight, and If i were you I would extend both. But you dont have to.

Next just assemble everything back up and your tail lights are a VAG COM move away from working 100%. You will notice before you use the Vag cable that the tail lights work, but the wrong parts are lit up. This is what you change in the program. I used the below LED tail coding from the A3 DIY section, but it was very vague. I will elaborate on it a little more:



Once in VDS:

select - central electronics

Then once it loads click on - coding

Then click on - help with long coding (it is named something like this but not exact.)

Next you will notice as you click on the squares with the green numbers going left to right it says which byte you are in. Those correspond with the Bytes below. Essentially you are just dimming some lights and brightening others so it turns on the LED portion while you are just using tail lights. Then the inside lights up as you hit the brakes.

Btye 9 to Dec = 0 - as the final brake light
Byte 10 to Dec = 0 - Fog lamps as a taillight
Byte 12 to Dec = 36 - dimming rear standlight
Byte 19 Bit 2 Cold Diagnosis rear active - this must be activated


Hatch line to tap is Grey with brown stripe(notice the previous person said Grey with the brown stripe. I said light purple, it is close to both. However it is the only 1 of the 4 lines, close to either of those colors so you will not have an issues selecting which ones to clip on to.