I had some spare bulbs laying around so I figured I would try them out on the car. I had an 1156 LED super white bulb and a 1156 small housing (size of a marble) yellow bulb that had a 12V 35W rating.

Both bulbs work great and light up well. The super white matches perfectly to the Bi-Xenon HID headlights and looks good in the headlamp housing. The yellow bulb is bright and looks good as well, a true yellow/gold look that isn't faded or bland looking like my H11 foglight bulbs. I never drive with the DRLs on so I figure I would just leave either set in.

Here's the problem. Both bulbs light up great, but the LEDs don't draw much power. LEDs don't draw much power in general. Because of this, the car's computer throws the error on the cluster saying that the bulb is out and needs to be changed and leaves an annoying picture of a bulb with a 'X' through it right in the middle of the cluster. So I took them out after about 2 minutes of use. I put the yellow ones in there and drove around with it for an hour with the DRLs on. No burnouts, no color fading, no error messages on my cluster. So I just left those in there for now. I guess the only way to run the LEDs would be to either find a set that draws more current so it doesn't throw an error message, or to some how VAG the computer into not displaying 'bulb out' messages.

Here are some quick pics I took up close of the bulbs. From a distance and in person, they both look much better looking on the car.

<img src="http://www.jdm****.com/A4drl/02.jpg">

<img src="http://www.jdm****.com/A4drl/21.jpg">

<img src="http://www.jdm****.com/A4drl/04.jpg">

<img src="http://www.jdm****.com/A4drl/19.jpg">

<img src="http://www.jdm****.com/A4drl/09.jpg">

<img src="http://www.jdm****.com/A4drl/08.jpg">

<img src="http://www.jdm****.com/A4drl/15.jpg">

 

You can put a resistor in parallel with the bulb - that would accomplish what you want

 

how easy is it to change blubs? rumor was you needed to take off the bumper?

 

It literally takes less than a minute to swap bulbs. Just open up the circular cover and reach in there and twist out the grey socket (shown below) and there's your bulb. Then pop the new one in place, put the socket back in and close the cover. You're done.

<img src="http://www.jdm****.com/A4foglight/images/35.jpg">

 

Remembering my EE/ECE college courses I took over 6 years ago, if I recall correctly, putting a resistor in parallel to the bulb would mean jumping the positive &amp; negative feed wires to the bulb with a resistor. The LEDs are aleady low impeadeance so adding a resistor in parallel may help but I really don't want to splice into the stock harness wiring just to run the LEDs. Plus I have a feeling the computer may still see a problem there and still throw a code. Maybe try to find some high impeadeance LED 1156 bulbs, if they even make anything like it.

EDIT: I just found <b><a href="https://forums.audiworld.com/a4gen2/msgs/610739.phtml">THIS LINK</a></b> here that shows adding a load equalizer will solve the problem. Now, if I feel like getting it and splicing it in, I'll run the LEDs. But since I never run my DRLs, I'll probably just pass on this project.

 

on the b6 forum when we were upgrading our ecode citylights. It's really a piece of cake, the only thing you'll have to worry about is the placement of the L-EQ's. They get extremely hot and will melt through plastic. "Eddieman" used an extension to mount them elsewhere in the engine compartment for better cooling. Good luck with that and post some pics for us if you decide to do it. BTW, where did you get the bulbs and what model are they?

 

or maybe if you designed a cluster thta uses Luxeons, that would not only be much brighter, but draw enough power to fool the car's computer.

 

Yeah, I know about the bi-xenons (got'em myself), but how will you flash someone when your HIDs are off i.e. daytime?

 

while the lower half is the low beam. Next time you're behind a black colored car, window, or just get outside of it and look, you'll see the high beam and low beam come from the same projector and the DRL is its own bulb and area on the headlamp housing.

 

The thing that concerns me is that you have LED's in place of the high beam halogen bulbs. Halogen high beam are still useful with bi-xenons. They are the ones that turn on when the HID's are off. It takes 3-5 seconds for HID's to fully ignite thus rendering them useless as high beams for emergency situations when they are off (daylight).

I know that some put LED's in place of the city lights, but not in place of high beam halogens.