D3 Rear lights removal / Facelift Retrofit
 

Ok this tut is for the Audi A8 D3 rearlights, it will help in the removal of trim prior to working on the lights and to run extra wires as per the Audi wiring diagrams ( wiring has still to be proven to do anything on a Euro car and may only apply to US market)

Please read the comments properly as not everthing can be photographed, as such I have tried to explain as clearly as possible the other elements of doing this work.

We are going to start off with the Boot / Trunk Lid lights.

The first part you will want to remove is the Toolbox this is held in place by 5 phillips head screws that are under the caps pictured below that can be prised out using a small flat blade screwdriver or similar.
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Now that you have that removed you will want to remove the light by gently levering it out on the edge nearest the grab handle.

http://i853.photobucket.com/albums/a...9.jpg~original

Once you have the light out of the hole, remove it from the cable harness and poke the harness back into the Boot lid.
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Now you need to remove the cover that goes over the latch mechanisim, just grab it firmly and pull it straight off.

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Next up is the two grab handles, there is a flap covering two phillips screws that needs to be prised open, then remove the screws and the handle pulls out easily.

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Now at this point I removed the cover without removing the Boot lid close switch as it looks like it could be easily damaged, so I carefully popped the clips on the cover and once it was released I disconnected the wiring from the switch leaving it in the cover.

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The choice is yours! You can see in the following image the locations of the clips that need popping out.

I started at the bottom edge in the photo below with the two arrows by putting my fingers between the cover and Boot lid and pulling straight out.

All the clips should be popped perpendicular to the panel like the first two.


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Now you have the cover removed you will see the cable harness securing clips that poke through the lid. Push the ribbed pin in the picture up into the void to enable you to take the connection out of the void.

Once you have the connection on the outside unplug the two halves and then remove the mounting pin, it just slides off after lifting the tab a bit.

The reason for removing the mounting pin is the plug will not fit out through the hole in the bootlid when you remove the light unit.

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Now that the mounting pin has been removed follow the cable harness from the plug towards the light and you will feel a rubber grommet where the cable passes to the outside.

Push the grommet clear of the bootlid, you can now remove the three nuts (8mm) securing the light unit to the bootlid and remove it carefully while guiding the remaing cable harness and plug out through the hole in the lid.

http://i853.photobucket.com/albums/a...3.jpg~originalhttp://i853.photobucket.com/albums/a...e.jpg~original

If you are just replacing like for like then its just a reversal of the process as far as the bootlid lights are concerned.

That said if you are fitting old lights back in then you will need to purchase double sided adhesive foam tape to adhere the trim to the boot lid, This can be bought at Maplin.

For alignment of the inner light see the following image, I found the process easier if you nip the nuts up finger tight so the unit is snug to the panel then screw the stud in or out to get the light flush with the panel.

It will take trial and error and a remember to check with the bootlid closed to see if the panel gap follows neatly.

Once you are happy with the position remember to tighten the nuts before going any further.

http://i853.photobucket.com/albums/a...f.jpg~original

If your retrofitting facelift lights and want to run the extra wires then continue on.

As I was fitting the Facelift lights to a early 2007 car it did not have the wiring in place for pin 7 on the new light cluster, so I ran the extra wires to the Control unit in the right hand side of the boot.

As yet it still remains to be seen that the extra wires do anything and it may be only applicable to the US market. (Time will tell)

Items you will need to run extra wires are :-

1. 1 roll of 0.5mm2 speaker cable (bought from Halfords)
2. Roll of 0.5mm Double sided adhesive foam tape (maplin)
3. Insulating tape or (Coroplast which is the cloth loom tape used in the car)
4. Soldering iron
5. Solder
6. Heatshrink tubing
7. Electronic snips / Sidecutters
8. Electrical contact for Loom Plug 1 of Part No. 000 979 019E or (EA Gold Plated Nice) they come with one wire and contact either end.
9. Stiff wire for pulling Speaker cable through (I used piece of Household Twin & Earth and stripped 1 core out of it)
10. Silicone oil (Cable lube to make it easier to pull through)
11. Silicone sealant

Ok on to the task in hand, now you have the Bootlid lights in place I started by un-clipping the cable loom that runs on the right side bootlid hinge.

Un clip it by pulling on the top edge carefully to get it off the hinge bracket.

http://i853.photobucket.com/albums/a...3.jpg~original

Once you have it off, pull the plastic tube from the support that you just pulled off, then roll back the rubber parts either end of the tube to expose the cable harness inside.

Once you have done that lube the end of the pull wire and feed through the tube as in the photos below.

http://i853.photobucket.com/albums/a...a.jpg~originalhttp://i853.photobucket.com/albums/a...f.jpg~original

Once that is in place attach the speaker cable to the clean end using electrical tape, making sure to tape it 4 - 5" along the pull wire tightly and not making it too thick or you will struggle to feed it through.

Once attached lube the cable and pull it through the tube like the next photos.

http://i853.photobucket.com/albums/a...d.jpg~originalhttp://i853.photobucket.com/albums/a...1.jpg~original

I then pulled the rubber boot out of the bottom right hand corner of the bootlid and fed the pull wire through the rubber trunking and repeated the process to get the speaker wire through that section and up into the bootlid.

Use the stiff wire to assist getting the wire up from the corner of the bootlid and out, I pulled through quite a bit as you don't want to be short later on.


http://i853.photobucket.com/albums/a...f.jpg~originalhttp://i853.photobucket.com/albums/a...2.jpg~original

Once you have the wire into the bootlid split the shotgun speaker cable and route to where the two harness terminate and tape it to the original loom to prevent it ending up in places it shouldn't

http://i853.photobucket.com/albums/a...4.jpg~original

Now repeat the cable pulling through the other rubber tube by pulling out the end next to the right hand light as in the next picture, using the same technique feed the speaker wire through and leave hanging for now.

http://i853.photobucket.com/albums/a...a.jpg~original

Now we need to add the extra terminal to the two plugs, as stated earlier the terminal comes with two ends attached to one piece of wire so cut it in half.

Open the side of the plug 1,3,5 & 7 like below and a insert the new contact in position 7 making sure you have looked at the orentation of the other contacts so you fit the new one correctly as they are not meant to come out once locked home in the plug.

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Once you have fitted the contact and closed the plug you will need to solder the wire to the cable you ran.

Cut the wires to length and bare the ends ready for tinning, tin the ends with solder and once cool cut a piece of heatshrink and feed over the end of the wire.

Now solder the two wires together and then heatshrink to seal the join.

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The more observant among you will have noticed the different wire colours above, I ran the red wire to the Left side light unit as Red is Port on a ship so it was easy for me to remember later on when the other end gets connected.

What ever colours you have a choose be sure to make a note so you dont get them mixed up later when it gets connected to the control unit loom.

Repeat the above on the other plug and you are ready to move on.

Now you will need to remove the outer lights, the plastic trim that rests against the light is stuck on with double sided tape and will need peeling away from the light unit. Remove the caps and inside there are two 12mm nuts holding the light unit in.

Using a 12mm socket fill it with blutack or something like that so that the nut sticks in the socket, otherwise you run the risk of losing them into the guts of the car never to be seen again. (Like me :mad: )

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With the outer lights removed we can finish running the wires to the inside of the car prior to fitting the lights back in.

Feed the cable boot and speaker wire through to the space for the right hand outer light as shown.

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Now pull out the grommet that goes to the inside of the car

http://i853.photobucket.com/albums/a...7.jpg~original

Now pierce a hole through the grommet in this location.

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Feed the speaker wire through the pierced hole and into the inside of the car, then refit the grommet and seal the cable and hole with some silicone as shown. Now tidy the cable routing by taping to the existing loom.

http://i853.photobucket.com/albums/a...0.jpg~original


Now the wiring has been routed you can get on with fitting the new outer lights, they are plug and play but will most likely need adjusting to sit correctly in the bodywork.

I did not have a female torx bit small enough to agjust the lights while in situ so had to go through the process of putting them in, looking, taking them out, adjusting the bolts and try again till I was happy with the levelness of the units.

Once your happy with the levelness etc pull the light out again and cut and fit some adhesive foam tape shown in the image.

http://i853.photobucket.com/albums/a...5.jpg~original

Please bear in mind that if your not careful you will lose the securing nuts into the car body.

If you do lose some take the adjusting nuts off the old lights.

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Now your lights are all bolted in its onto finishing the wiring.

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We can see from the wiring diagrams that the left light has extra wire (B630) with a colour of Purple/Green and following the diagram back to J393 it goes to pin 3 of the 15 pin connector (A)

The right light has extra wire (B631) with a colour of Blue/White and it goes to pin 5 of the 15 pin connector (A)

If you ran the wires as I did with the same colours then you will splice the Red (Port) wire into the Purple/Green on Pin 3, and the Black wire spliced into the Blue/White Pin 5

You will already have removed the right hand side cover in the boot to feed the wire through to the inside of the car and while laying in the car if you look up to where the wiring comes through from the light area you will hopefully see something like this. Notice the Speaker cable hanging down form the grommet.

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Now looking up inside you can see the Central Convenience Unit (J393)
Disconnect the upper brown coloured plug (15 pin Connector A)

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It is wrapped in Coroplast loom tape, carefully cut it open near the plug and unwind it back allowing you to splay the wires open

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Now locate pins 3 and 5 Purple/Green & Blue/White and cut them 3" back from the plug and using the same soldering procedure from earlier splice the new wires into the loom as shown in the photo.

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Now tidy the loom back up and plug it back in to where it came from.

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Only thing left to do now is tidy up that bloody mess you have just made, test everything, once your happy pull the adhesive tape covers on the inner lights like below and refit all the trims.

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Now go have a few of these :pint::cheers::pint:

Great write up thanks - added to sticky +++

^^^ What he said +++

Now with more words and pictures.

Took me longer to sort all them photo's and write about it than it took to do it all.

Tatafirnoo

Awesome - will be very useful when I have a to do this! +++

Thanks for this Delboy. I changed my two bootlid lights this afternoon. Without your excellent write up its no doubt the whole thing would have been a disaster and my darkening mood would have led inextricably to divorce and ruin.
As it is my youngest thinks I am a God of vehicle electronics. SWMBO has no idea what i was doing or how much it cost to 'fix a bulb' and as a result hasn't once (today) told me I should have bought a bloody Mondeo.+++:D

Glad it was of use to you, don't bin the other lights, I think it's going to be quite easy to repairthem and will be having a go at mine when I go offshore at the end of this month

I'll keep you posted

Yep, this is what I call a writeup!

Many thanks for all your work.

Hi Delboy,

So just to double check, did you run the extra wires at the moment without an added benefit to date? If so, I may leave that bit out.

At the moment, do your rear lights operate like the ones in the video below?

Thanks,

Oli

http://youtu.be/8Sy28sAoFLQ

Hi Delboy,

So i did some more digging after updating my own lights today and I have a theory that those outside of the US don't need the elusive extra cable to make the inner clusters light up...

Take a look at the video below of a US based facelift and you can see at 8.45 how different the lights operate. Our equivalent of brake lights are indicators in their case...and it means the inner clusters also need to blink hence the need for the extra cable.

Just my theory but would be interested to hear what others think.

Thanks,

Oli

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...O6VJaCm8#t=524

Cheers
 

Thats pretty much the conclusion I have came too as well, oh well your brothers across the pond can benefit from my loss. +++

I'm really sorry, the answer may be even there but why all this hassle with wiring???
I've done my tail lights recently and it was a straight swap.
No errors or less functions.
Even German supplier who I got it from told me its a straight swap, plug and play.

Other than that well worth it !!!!

We all got to that conclusion too +++

Sorry guys ;)

My eyes went all funny after looking at all this pictures ;)

Del, Oli, M-A8, I read the thread (admittedly not to the T) but, if the conclusion is that the extra wiring is not necessary, did (the extra wiring that Del did) it not do anything extra at all? :Confused:

It did nothing, but if I was needing to code the lights to American market then the extra wire I guess would get used, but in UK it is not required and was a total waste of my time.

Thank you so much for this tutorial! I'm in the U.S. and this solved my "tail lamp out" error that occurred when I retrofitted the newer LED lights.
I overlooked this part of the write-up and dropped the nuts into the body of the car but luckily I was able to retrieve them with a 20" long flexible magnet.

Hey there
I've just used your splendid guide to swapping out the rear lights on my 03 4.2 petrol. Thanks for making it painless. I needed to replace the O/S outer, as someone had driven into the corner of the car, and driven off...
So I thought I'd change the age degraded units, and my does the car look better!
Thanx again,

BTW is there a sticky for removal of the MMI screen? Yep, the plastic gears have failed, and the screen doesn't rise like it oughter!

Kevin
London W3

03 4.2 Petrol, paddle shift, sports suspension, adaptive headlights.

This should help -
http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/showpost....0&postcount=18

hi mate did you replace them with new facelift ones? If so what sort of wonga did it set you back?
cheers

Great write-up Del, it was really useful when I changed my inner units today. The only difficulty I encountered was fitting those grommets....I needed an extra pair of <small> hands.

The originals were fitted by Ian (pre March 2014) and had failed the standard way, horizontal cracks along the reverse light section, leading to water ingress and eventual failure. As everyone has stated, shocking build quality for a premium car :tuttut:

I've bought from Spareto in Estonia, another member first posted about them when he upgraded his S8 to the facelift lights. Back then it was around £650 for a full set but looking at their prices now it'll be approx £780 (plus postage) for those same units. I don't quite understand why all four are different prices, but they are. I haven't priced them anywhere else but I'd imagine that price is competitive +++

They were under £700 when I last priced them up few months back. I could not justify that amount on lights as my ones are very good at present.

Whats with these photobucket water marks on pics now? I cant follow the guide as all the photos are blurred.

Photobucket was free and then they pulled the rug from under user's feet.
There is a workaround to use Chrome browser with the Photobucket hotlink fix extension ...https://chrome.google.com/webstore/d...alioapbifiaedg

Thanks Snapdragon! :)

I need to replace my nearside outer as it's after getting cracked. Before I go straight to the Audi dealer, can anyone tell me what brand are used OEM or can recommend any one in particular? I see the ULO brand in a lot of places. Only thing now is that the new replacement may possibly make all the rest look a bit shabby.

ULO are the OEM for these. Forget Audi, cheapest is here

https://spareto.co.uk/t/vehicles/aud...gQDmZ_KBSxC6eE

Thanks for that. I see I can get the brand new ULO or a secondhand original for the same money. I still haven't decided as I'm half leaning to the secondhand one so that it blends in with what's already there, although that's not to say the secondhand replacement has aged identically to my own either, so still deliberating.

As said, ULO are original. They made them for Audi for the D3 and Audi put their stamp on it and almost doubled the price!

They all fail with age, seams crack and moisture gets in, LEDs start failing. No way of knowing how long second hand will last, for the silly money they are selling it's not worth buying second hand. Either repair existing or buy new. I would not pay more than £50 for used.