D4 Headlamp unit
 

Ok, I'm new to the forum, bought a D4 last week.

I've just found out about the novel automatic transmission selector in a rather expensive way. Put the car in park (so I thought) hopped out to shut a gate. Turned around and my new A8 D4 (11 plate) was reversing on its own. eeek ...

I've owned several automatic cars, Toyota, Several Skoda's, two BMW 7 series, two Volvo XC90's, VW tiguan and an Audi 100. Never ever has this happened to me. With every other automatic car you have a detent system and postive position selector. With the Audi D4 you do not you sort of push it around and it picks a gear. So a word of warning, be very careful with this.

I managed to stop it before it did some serious damage to the environment or my neighbours house, but not before it removed a fence post, scraped a bit of paint and worse of all .. cracked my passengers head lamp unit. It has about a half inch crack in the bottom of the unit.

Amazingly it hasn't actually dented any thing, but I suspect the headlamp unit is going to really hurt financially. All the lights work fine and its just the surface of unit that has the crack.

So any suggestions for sorting the headlamp unit?

Depends how long you intend to keep and if it's just a surface crack or going to let water in over time?

A standard gas discharge unit is about £650, cornering light £730, LED £1640!

I've just bought it, so maybe three years. All the lights are fine no cracks. Its the unit body itself that's cracked.

(Sorry about the double post, tried to edit this post, but was denied. Thought my original post didn't take, tried it again and ended up with two!).

I guess it also depends where the crack is and whether it's distorting or interfering with the dipped or main beam.
I'd probably start by carefully going over the crack with transparent nail varnish or car topcoat lacquer to try and seal it against water ingress and make it less visible, then see how bad it looks and how well it works.

Its definately out of any beams .. on the side of the unit.

I've added a picture of it to a public gallery on my profile - Now attached.

Looks "hideable". Of course you'll still know it's there..... :-(
You know you can upload pictures directly into a post - use "Manage Attachments". :cool:

I will definately replace the unit. Love the car. I was after a Phaeton, but proved impossible to test drive one in my local area. VW dealer suggested I try an A8. So I did and bought it. I've done a couple of 160 mile trips in it so far, very nice indeed.

Thanks for the prices, but how much for the actual unit itself with no lights?

Spied this guy on e-bay.. any views? http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Audi-A2-A3...-/281162646377

Also found a unit for £49, but it has scratch on the front, maybe if I buy the scrached unit and send it to him?

Unfortunately I don't think you can buy just the front cover :(

Have attached a pdf of the page from Etka for reference