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That are the same lamps as under the doors. Bulbs out, led in. Connected to trunk light.
Nice! What I meant though was: what situations did you use the lights in? Normally when I walk up to the trunk, I don't find myself needing the area behind the car illuminated. (Not that "need" ever enters into the question of additional light of course! )
If I'm at a sporting event (what we call "tailgating" in this context) I would want the lights on for a lot longer than the trunk light stays on...and probably not want to run the car battery for that.
I'm not saying it's not useful, just that I'm not sure when it would be useful...
BTW, I like the double handle on that trunk lid! My C7 has this silly emergency escape handle there
1) I replaced the trunk incandescent with an LED assembly, mostly "just because", and in doing so I snapped a quick picture of how I soldered the trigger wires to the existing trunk assembly:
Note that here Audi used Brown for ground and White for power, so you can figure out the polarity for your trigger if needed (check with meter of course!).
I ordered two types, but only this one was truly error free *IN THE TRUNK*... which leads me to #2....
2) I tried replacing the lamps in the red door light assemblies. Ultimately no joy. Neither of my LEDs would run without triggering errors in the Door Electronics modules and causing them to be shut off. The assembly that was error-free in the trunk still threw errors in the doors - in the individual door electronics modules, not the 46 Central Convenience (where the trunk error appears). The error code caused the door lights to go off and stay off for some time - not sure if it was restarting the car or leaving the door closed for a while which reset the light power.
So the LEDs would stay on for a while and then go off, unlike the lamps which seemed to stay on indefinitely. Worst of all though, a very unscientific "darkened garage visual check" said the LEDs were a tad bit dimmer than the incandescent lamps, so the lamps are staying in.
3) I did use the same LED assembly apparently successfully in the glove box. I couldn't find any error codes thrown by the glove box lamp being disconnected - but I was doing this before the doors so I hadn't realized there wasn't necessarily an immediate code. (The trunk throws a code right away, the doors seem to have a delay.) I'll check the car again periodically, but I hadn't seen a code come up yet. If true, then one should be able to pick any appropriate size/power LED assembly for the glove box and be able to choose color temperature, etc. Hmmm, next I might actually want to use strip lights to relight the glovebox, as it suffers from trunk-like dimness IMO too
Imo the red door lights are not suitable for LED. With bulb light you have a better result. But nevertheless I replaced the original bulbs (5W) with 10W bulbs.
Imo the red door lights are not suitable for LED. With bulb light you have a better result. But nevertheless I replaced the original bulbs (5W) with 10W bulbs.
I've thought about spray painting or otherwise silvering the inside of the black plastic back part. It amazes me that Audi lets so much of the bulb's light be lost like that! I guess it's not "lost" completely as it heats up those light assemblies to an amazing degree!
I think an LED + reflector setup would be needed to make LEDs work well in those door fixtures, but if one added a reflector I suspect even the bulb would be much improved. Sure would be nice if Audi had a dedicated LED fixture - there's plenty of room for lots of nice 5050 or 5630 LEDs if one built them into the fixture. (As opposed to what we've been doing replacing an incandescent bulb.)
Hmmm, maybe I should buy an extra assembly and some of those flat rectangular LED arrays and see what I could do....
As previously stated, I bought a 6 pack of leds and changed the trunk, the red on the doors and then read this thread re the glove box. I checked the glove box and it appears to be better at heating than it is lighting! Ironic that the valve is open to cool my bottle of water and the light is there to warm it. Needless to say, I changed this lamp with my last led and it's cooler and brighter.
Is my car finally incandescent free?
Original incandescent bulb: 380mA (~4.6W)
Trunk LEDs shown above: 210-220mA (~2.6W)
Code-throwing LEDs not shown: 70mA (~0.84W)
I'm guessing that the doors need more oomph. I've ordered a number of Chinese LED panels to try, will eventually report back. I got some very nice single-sided 6 LED assemblies which are heatsinked and everything (not reversible though) but even they only pull 200mA
Last edited by Richard Solomon; 09-18-2014 at 12:26 PM.
Pictures in post #36. These lamps have far more output than most of the others shown and give off more light than the incandescent they replaced. My glove box and trunk is brighter and they work fine for the red lights in the doors. I generated errors while changing the bulbs but now I have none.
I generated errors while changing the bulbs but now I have none.
Hmmm, I definitely had errors after installing the 220mA LEDs, but maybe I needed to wait and clear them and try again? The lights would come on after door opening but shut off after a minute or two - where the incandescent stayed on.
I ordered a set like yours to compare - if they pulled 20mA per LED those would be darn close to identical to the incandescent's draw...
08-29-2014, 11:26 AM
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