danb986
In awe of VCDS
My project this weekend was to fit my cruise control bits and fit the LED bulbs and resistors to my front fog lights.
There is already a good guide for the cruise control (thanks to Sijones and Avus Sportback) so I thought I'd do one for the LED Resistors.
I bought some 68 LED H7 bulbs from ebay for about £3 and after waiting for the slow boat from Hong Kong, they eventually arrived. I was fairly certain that they'd throw up a bulb out warning on the DIS, so I fitted them and then turned off the cold diagnosis on the front fogs using VCDS. For reasons I still don't understand, the bulbs worked fine, but still showed a bulb out warning.
After a bit of searching on this, I came across a thread that Silky had done on the same subject. I also discovered that he bought his from T8UPS, so I thought he was the guy to contact. After a few messages, Trups sorted me out a couple of resistors and I was in business again.
These are the resistors I bought from him:
I removed the front fog grilles by levering the grille down from the top with one screwdriver and levering up from the bottom with another. There are little slots, so it'll be obvious when you look. Please keep in mind that mine is just a Sport bumper, so it will be different on the S-line and S3 bumpers.
With the grilles out, I undid the 3 torx screws holding in the fog lamp and pulled it forward. I unplugged the plug in the back of the unit by putting a small flat screwdriver in the gap in the side of the plug and gently lifting up the tab. The plug easily slid out. With the lamp removed I unclipped the cover at the back of the plug on the harness to allow me to remove the plastic sheath around the two fog light wires.
After I'd got to the wires I stripped a small section of the insulation off of both of them.
(sorry for the blurry photo, it looked fine on the screen of my camera
)
I then soldered the resistors wires to the exposed sections of wire and used heat-shrink tape. I hadn't used this stuff before, but it was amazing. Normally you need to be able to slide a tube of heat-shrink over the wire, but this isn't possible if you haven't cut the the wire and are only joining to it. The heat-shrink tape allowed me to waterproof the joint without having to actually cut any wires all the way through.
After both wires were done, I replaced the plastic sheath and the cover at the back of the plug and tidied the wires with some insulating tape. You can see the cover at the back of the plug has been put back and also the sheath.
I then had to find a mounting point that was away from anything plastic or flammable due to the resistors getting very hot. On both sides there is a horn, so I used the bolt at the back of each one. It was a T27 torx bolt and it was a bit fiddly to get to, but it was an ideal spot. The passenger side one had masses of space, but the drivers side one was a bit tighter. The only thing it gets near though is the washer bottle, but after a little bend of the bracket it had plenty of clearance.
In the photos below you can see the back of the arrowhead shaped brackets that the resistors are mounted to. You can probably just see the gold resistors behind them.
Drivers side:
Passenger side:
This is what it looks like with one done. They aren't at full brightness here. I've got my fogs set as DRL's and the setting that controls the dimming of them is turned down from 92 to 40. This means that they come on at 40% brightness as DRL's, but go off when you turn on your sidelights or headlights. If you then turn on the front fogs they operate at full brightness.
Here are the finished articles (again running as DRL's)
Brightness wise, they aren't as bright as the old H7 bulbs, but they are perfect as DRL's and look still pretty bright when running at full brightness. I can't imagine they'd be much use as a driving light and awful as a fog light, but that's not what I got them for. I never found my standard front fog lights to be much use in fog anyway to be honest.
They even look OK with my headlights, which are halogens, but with Osram Nightbreaker Plus bulbs. If you've got xenons then they'd look even better. Check out Silky's thread for photo's of his.
If you fancy doing this yourself then get in touch with Trups (T8UPS) and he'll sell you everything you need. He's extremely helpful and a real pleasure to deal with.
There is already a good guide for the cruise control (thanks to Sijones and Avus Sportback) so I thought I'd do one for the LED Resistors.
I bought some 68 LED H7 bulbs from ebay for about £3 and after waiting for the slow boat from Hong Kong, they eventually arrived. I was fairly certain that they'd throw up a bulb out warning on the DIS, so I fitted them and then turned off the cold diagnosis on the front fogs using VCDS. For reasons I still don't understand, the bulbs worked fine, but still showed a bulb out warning.
After a bit of searching on this, I came across a thread that Silky had done on the same subject. I also discovered that he bought his from T8UPS, so I thought he was the guy to contact. After a few messages, Trups sorted me out a couple of resistors and I was in business again.
These are the resistors I bought from him:
I removed the front fog grilles by levering the grille down from the top with one screwdriver and levering up from the bottom with another. There are little slots, so it'll be obvious when you look. Please keep in mind that mine is just a Sport bumper, so it will be different on the S-line and S3 bumpers.
With the grilles out, I undid the 3 torx screws holding in the fog lamp and pulled it forward. I unplugged the plug in the back of the unit by putting a small flat screwdriver in the gap in the side of the plug and gently lifting up the tab. The plug easily slid out. With the lamp removed I unclipped the cover at the back of the plug on the harness to allow me to remove the plastic sheath around the two fog light wires.
After I'd got to the wires I stripped a small section of the insulation off of both of them.
(sorry for the blurry photo, it looked fine on the screen of my camera
)
I then soldered the resistors wires to the exposed sections of wire and used heat-shrink tape. I hadn't used this stuff before, but it was amazing. Normally you need to be able to slide a tube of heat-shrink over the wire, but this isn't possible if you haven't cut the the wire and are only joining to it. The heat-shrink tape allowed me to waterproof the joint without having to actually cut any wires all the way through.
After both wires were done, I replaced the plastic sheath and the cover at the back of the plug and tidied the wires with some insulating tape. You can see the cover at the back of the plug has been put back and also the sheath.
I then had to find a mounting point that was away from anything plastic or flammable due to the resistors getting very hot. On both sides there is a horn, so I used the bolt at the back of each one. It was a T27 torx bolt and it was a bit fiddly to get to, but it was an ideal spot. The passenger side one had masses of space, but the drivers side one was a bit tighter. The only thing it gets near though is the washer bottle, but after a little bend of the bracket it had plenty of clearance.
In the photos below you can see the back of the arrowhead shaped brackets that the resistors are mounted to. You can probably just see the gold resistors behind them.
Drivers side:
Passenger side:
This is what it looks like with one done. They aren't at full brightness here. I've got my fogs set as DRL's and the setting that controls the dimming of them is turned down from 92 to 40. This means that they come on at 40% brightness as DRL's, but go off when you turn on your sidelights or headlights. If you then turn on the front fogs they operate at full brightness.
Here are the finished articles (again running as DRL's)
Brightness wise, they aren't as bright as the old H7 bulbs, but they are perfect as DRL's and look still pretty bright when running at full brightness. I can't imagine they'd be much use as a driving light and awful as a fog light, but that's not what I got them for. I never found my standard front fog lights to be much use in fog anyway to be honest.
They even look OK with my headlights, which are halogens, but with Osram Nightbreaker Plus bulbs. If you've got xenons then they'd look even better. Check out Silky's thread for photo's of his.
If you fancy doing this yourself then get in touch with Trups (T8UPS) and he'll sell you everything you need. He's extremely helpful and a real pleasure to deal with.
x
