Suggest you open up the fogs to confirm bulb type as there have been some mid year changes that may make reference docs unreliable. It's an easy job to pull out the grills around the fogs by releasing the tabs and then 3 torx screws to pull out the entire housing. Don't mess with the screw for beam alignment, just the 3 screws for the housing. My bulbs were H7s for a 2006. Hoen makes a very nice HID color-matching halogen bulb that is an easy swap and will be VERY close to the color temp of factory HID headlights. An HID retrofit for the fogs requires a kit with ballasts that need to be mounted somewhere and often times drilling for the additional wiring. When done right, HIDs work well. However, IMO with so much junk out there, I would go with the Hoen Xenonmatch bulbs, 15-20 min of work and be done with it.

http://www.hoen-usa.com/fog.htm

Just my 2 cents.

 

If you want to use fog lights as DRL you should not go for HID's. They will throw a code every time you start the car.

 

Good tips. Xenon match or yellow? Yellow might look a bit odd for DRLs though? Also looks very 1970's French.

 

Yes, but they are actually very good for fog.

 

Maybe its just me, but I think the yellow fogs are looking pretty good. I wasn't sure at first but now I like them. If I tier of them, I'll go back to my Hoen Xenonmatch "white" bulbs. As they are an easy change.

My logic on the yellow is this is a sporty European luxo sedan that can pull off the GT look of yellow front facing DRLs. All the late model Corvettes and Caddys in GMs line are running amber DRLs and tend to stand out just a bit on the highway. So i thought I would try it as well.

The lights are more yellow than the photo shows...

 

Yellow is better for fog, absolutely. Not sure I buy the GT look though. It's a limo, not a LeMans prototype.

I'll probably end up going for yellow though as it is better for it's intended purpose.

 

I have noted this earlier, but most folks on here don't know what is really meant by Daytime Running Lights (DRL) when it comes to the A8 (D3). DRLs are NOT the headlights (low beam) themselves. The DRLs are the little bulbs that reside just above the passing lights (used to flash people...the passing lights are actually brightest lights on the car..way brighter than bi-xenon high-beams.)

and no one has explained how to get ONLY those two little bulbs to come on WITHOUT aaaaany other lights also on. Even in the post where he shows his fogs working, the DRLs are on too.

I want JUST the DRLs on..and nothing else, when I drive around town during the day. I haven't found or seen a way to do this.

But, on this site, most of the people here are referring to the DRLs as just making the headlights come on when the car starts. Because that is what you get when you change the setting via the VAG-COM and/or via the MMI.

The one cool option here is the fog-light as a DRL. However, as seems to be ignored all too often on this site (or just plain ignorant of the facts), it is against the law in the USA to have your fog lights on when it is not foggy. Have had a friend or two pulled over because of this fact/law. It is ALSO illegal in the USA to have fog lights that work when the high-beams are on....obvious reason why...you could essentially "blind" yourself if it waaaas actually fogging out. ..see Law #1 noted earlier in this paragraph.

So, fogs as DRLs are fine...but they would have to auto-shut off the moment the headlights came on (and thus, force you to use a switch to turn back on....which I believe a poster here noted was working.)

 

I think you have your terminology and how they actually work mixed up. The little 5W bulbs you're referring to as the DRL's are not DRL's. They are the parking lights. Early D3's don't have dedicated DRL's. Later ones do, but they're in place of the "flash" halogen bulb of the early cars.

Depending on MY and how you code the car, the DRL option in MMI activates either the low beam xenon, actual DRL's, or the fog lights.

It's seemingly not possible to disable the small 5W parking light bulbs in the main headlamp unit whenever any front lighting is active. FWIW, coding the car to Canadian spec so the fogs are DRL's, as soon as the low beams come on, they automatically switch off. If you then want to use the fogs for actual fog, you have to activate them manually via the switch, which also kills the low beams (and high if you have them on at the time). You can still use the flash function though. The 5W parking bulbs remain on the whole time.

Coding to Canadian spec also allows xenon high beam AND halogen flash as high beam together. Yes, it's technically not permitted by DOT regs in the US to have that many (4) high beams active at one time, but that doesn't seem to bother anyone in the real world.

 

Having done this myself (fogs as DRLs) there is one small edit to your comments. Switching the fogs on manually does not kill the low beams; they remain on. As you noted, when high beams are activated the fogs will turn off.

 

True, although the light switch has to be in the fully manual position to do it which isn't affected by however you code the car.

If you have it in auto, then pulling the switch out to activate the front fogs forces the switch to rotate into the parking light position. Then you have to turn it one more click to turn the low beams on with the fogs. Although the fogs will still automatically turn off if you activate high beam or flash functions.