Nebuul

My tt rs recently entered its extended warranty period. Of course, the first thing that happened is that stuff started breaking. However, the problem is not something I expected.

When unlocking my car at night, one of the taillights was slower to light up than the other, and it never reached full brightness. Turns out, the wiring had melted (due to resistance I guess), and they had to replace the bulb holder, bulb holder assembly, connector housing, and damaged wiring. Once the first side was repaired, it became obvious that the other side was similarly damaged, but not as badly (so it had appeared better by comparison), so it was fixed, too.

I'm just out the deductible for the extended warranty, but has anyone else experienced this issue? It seems like a fairly big design flaw for the lights' electrical systems to melt from normal use due to resistance heating.

Nebuul

I've done some more research, and it looks like this is actually a common problem that Audi does not officially recognize as a defect.

DissenTTS

Do you know if there's any way to do a visual inspection as a precaution?

I did recently find frayed and exposed wires behind my fog lights. I repaired the wiring on my own.

Vegas-roadster

I've been following 3 different TT forums for over 15 years and this is the first I have heard of anyone having this problem on a TT

Nebuul

Just do a Google search for "tt tail light problem" and you will see tons of posts about it. My car never showed a fault in the dash, but the melted wiring connectors that are down in many threads are what happened to mine.

Nebuul

The issue was visible when unlocking the car at night - it was not subtle. It didn't have anything to do with frayed wires. Instead, the connector just kind of melts down. It's either not enough metal for the voltage Audi puts through the circuit, or Audi is mixing metals at the contact point and the difference in resistance is cooking things.

Do a search for "tt taillight problem" and I'm sure you will find pics and vids.

Vegas-roadster

I did the search on Bing and Google as you suggested and found less than 5 reports similar to yours over the past 10 years, hardly a chronic problem. What I DID see in early Mk 2's was a frequent problem with false "tail light out" warning but melting the connector appears to be very rare. The resolution for both seems to be correcting a grounding problem in the wiring so they are somewhat related.