NextMan

For those of you who replaced or thinking of replacing the stock rear bulbs with LEDs and would like to disable the check control bulb failure warning then follow these simple steps.

Remove instrument cluster
With the red connector which was directly behind the auto check control in the instrument cluster locate red(brake) and grey/violet(tail) wires [pins 13 & 16].
Cut the two wires and isolate the end that goes down beneath the dashboard.
Earth the two wires from the connector side to any available earthing point.
Thats it.
I hope this is easy to understand and useful to anyone.

A6 2.8 quattro 1998

Stoney

I've wanted to go to LED taillights, but I want them to look right. One of the buld positions is a two-filament lamp. How does the LED deal with that? Or did you leave that one incandescent?

$240 worf of puddin

2nd do you have any pics?

NextMan

I do not have pics as I still do not have a digital camera. Maybe with xmas coming I might get lucky

The LED bulbs I use are from www.ultraleds.co.uk

The ones I used are: http://www.ultraleds.co.uk/product_info.php?cPath=44_62&products_id=1064& amp;osCsid=91da15e9a8c574f37713599c2d5c2c60

They are same brightness as the standard bulb maybe a bit brighter. This particular bulb has leds on the sides so it makes use of the original reflectors in the lighting housing.<ul><li><a href="http://www.ultraleds.co.uk/product_info.php?cPath=44_62&amp;products_id=1064& amp;osCsid=91da15e9a8c574f37713599c2d5c2c60">http://www.ultraleds.co.uk/product_info.php?cPath=44_62&amp;products_id=1064& amp;osCsid=91da15e9a8c574f37713599

Stoney

Which position, upper or lower? What about dual-filament bulb?

NextMan

Its in the lower position and the led bulb that I got replaces the dual filament type. Its a straight forward two contact bulb replacement, I think the bulb has its own resistors and stuff so with tail lights on it is on lower brightness and when the brakes are operated it goes on full brightness. I do not know if the specs is slightly different in other country but in UK the tail light and brake light are the dual filament bulbs.

Stoney

Thanks, I ordered. What about upper lamps?

Stoney

<ul><li><a href="http://www.ultraleds.co.uk/product_info.php?manufacturers_id=11&amp;products_ id=1070&amp;osCsid=91da15e9a8c574f37713599c2d5c2c6 0">http://www.ultraleds.co.uk/product_info.php?manufacturers_id=11&amp;products_ id=1070&amp;osCsid=91da15e

e-racer_2.7T

A little off topic, but related to getting the false bulb warnings to stop. This is a weird problem I had with my LED bulbs and the solution I used.

I hooked up some nice 18 LED brake lights. The "brake light out" warning comes on. Fine. Then the "tail light out" warning comes on too! It turns out that the LED "dual filament" light does not isolate the tail and brake circuits (since they are essentially the same circuit except with a resistor on the "tail light" prong. This combined with some weird wiring by Audi causes the tail light circuit to short to the brake light +ve. This causes the LED tailight not to come on.

Solution: I wired in a cheap diode (1007, I think) on the brake circuit line so that current can only flow in the correct direction.

I still get the "bulb out" warnings, but now the lights work properly. Along with the brilliant solution posted by NextMan, the bulbs should be working brilliantly (no pun intented).

Mike

e-racer_2.7T

Just a note about NextMan's method for disabling the warnings, the method is correct except that:
- The middle connector is grey with a pink lever (on my car at least).
- The red wire is actually pin 14, not 13.

Other than that, the method works!

Mike