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D2 - Lights Headlights, xenons, foglights. Everything outside the car that glows

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  #11  
Old 7th January 2015, 01:19 PM
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I was meaning the 2nd clear lens cover, behind the main one. I gather it has 4 lugs that need to be sprung off the front to get to the reflectors.

This pic pulled from Iyole's thread on refurbing the bi-xenons shows the bit I mean, although the lugs are virtually invisible in this pic!



The black plastic covers on the rear of the headlight assembly are still available and come with the seals.

Just been on to TPS and ordered the new rubber gaskets, which are available from stock in UK. Also 6 clips to replace the rough looking ones on top and any that I break on removal! Also new rubber retainers for the trim under the light where it joins the wing as they're bound to be aged.

Also managed to pick up 2 windscreen wiper blade inserts, which are no longer being produced. They had 3 available so I had 2 of them! Hopefully my blades turn out to be the correct factory type that the rubbers can be swapped on and not some aftermarket jobbies! They look correct to me - passenger one has the correct curve to it....
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  #12  
Old 7th January 2015, 05:17 PM
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Oh I see.
Sorry I have no experience with that second cover as I never removed it.

In terms of windscreen wiper blade inserts if you mean the rubbers themselves which scrape the windscreen (part number 895 955 429 A) they are still produced and available. I didn't know it is discontinued -- I just installed a pair from TPS this month. I always ordered them and it is very easy to change them every 6 months or so. They are manufactured for Audi by German company called SWF and it is a premium German brand. Because the same wiper blades were supplied for A6, which was sold on huge quantities I believe Audi just can't discontinue that stuff.
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Old 7th January 2015, 05:33 PM
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I was a bit surprised by the TPS chap suggesting they weren't doing them, but he was aware they were shared with the A6 as he mentioned it to me.

I guess the proof will be how easy it is to obtain them going forward?

Pretty sure my wiper blades are from 2010 - if not earlier!
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  #14  
Old 7th January 2015, 06:31 PM
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From ETKA:
Part number '895 955 429 A' is used on the following Audi cars: 100, 200, 4000, 50, 5000, 80/90, A4, A6, A8 D2, V8.

I've been using these rubbers since 2010 when I purchased the car. I immediately changed the wipers and the arms to brand new and only was changing rubbers since then. They last about 6 months or so if car is used every day.
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Old 9th January 2015, 02:39 PM
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Well I've got most of the bits I ordered from TPS. The clips holding the outer glass on are on back order, but got the gaskets for the front cover and the rubber blocks for the trim to go back on when I've finished.

This is the trim that needs to come off from under each headlight:




Thought it'd be handy to show where the fittings are. It pulls forwards and out from the end where the screw holds it in. The fitting into the wing was VERY tight! I ended up pulling the rubber bungs out of the wing with the trim, so was grateful I'd seen a photo of the wing so knew which direction to be pulling in! Needed to use a trim tool to persuade it out in the end.

Looking a bit sad without a headlight (and apologies for the bent in the bonnet which I still haven't had sorted!)



Headlight as removed



Plan is to sit down and give it an external clean before dismantling. I'll have a close look at the outer lens as I don't think it really needs much attention. The cover behind it, over the bulbs, is where most of the dullness seems to come from so that's going to get polished with the Megs stuff I bought
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  #16  
Old 11th January 2015, 06:59 PM
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Made a small amount of progress with the nearside headlight today - managed to strip it down without breaking any plastic, so that's a major bonus!

Managed to get the rubber trim off the outer edge of the outer lens housing without any dramas - didn't bother taking any pics of this stage as it's well documented elsewhere

Couple of my outer lens:





It looked pretty good on first removal, but with the side on view you can see some milking of the lens which should improve with polishing.

I trial fitted my new LED sidelight bulbs and sure enough they fit perfectly when mounted from the front! Having worked out there's enough depth to get them through from the front it's on to deciding how to access them in the future....

The inner lens needed to come off as that was cloudy and I wanted to have a proper go at it. I found the best way to get it off was to start with the upper clips as these were harder to access due to a small gap. I used finger pressure on the front to relieve any tension on the cover and just teased the clip up with a thin screwdriver. The bottom you can get to with fingers and once they're moving they seem pretty easy to remove. Once all 4 were freed off I carefully tweaked the cover off trying to keep it square to the body so none of the clips got too stretched.









It's only when you look at it against a white background that the discolouration is fairly obvious. I think I'll be hand polishing this rather than using the rotary tool that came in the Meg's kit.

I'm unsure what to do with the sidelight bulb setup - the LEDs I've bought are just under 12mm diameter. The inner lens cover is pretty much 11mm diameter, so literally only needs 1mm of relief to the inner lens cover to allow the bulb to be removed via the normal route. The housing is conical and of decent plastic thickness. If it weren't for the cutout in one corner I'd just run a 12mm HSS drill bit down the hole and open it up a little. My worry is that the drill bit will grab and crack the plastic around the cutout....

My other options are to use a Dremel with a sanding drum on it, if mine will fit in the hole which I think it will. My dad suggested just using the drill bit but twiddling it by hand to see if it's sharp enough to cut away gently at the plastic without grabbing.

This is the assembly without the inner lens cover fitted:





You can see distinct scoring from the bulb on the reflector above the bulb. I'll have a light rub at that with a microfibre but otherwise will have to live with it.

Think that's all I'll do today on it - all the bulbs are safely wrapped in paper towel in a box to keep them safe. Need to find a cloth to stop any dust getting in. Will aim to polish the lenses during the week ready for reassembly on Friday and then I'll do the other side.

Any suggestions on opening up the sidelight housing before I dive in?! By the way the bit I'd be opening up doesn't have any influence on holding the bulb in situ

Adrian
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  #17  
Old 16th January 2015, 12:06 PM
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Progress so far today:

Finally decided to 'bite the bullet' and attack the inner reflector cover sidelight area with my Dremel!





The area where the LEDs are on the side of the lamp are the widest part - needed opening up about 0.5mm all round so I just carefully used a small drum sander attachment on a slow speed and worked my way round, checking the clearance as I went.

The inner reflector probably doesn't look a lot different:







I've only wiped around it with a very fine microfibre towel. It's made no impression on the marks above the xenon bulb holder, but a fair bit of muck did come off on the towel so I'm happy it's as clean as it can be.

The inner reflector cover I decided not to polish - there's a lot of silvery finish edging to it and held up to the light it's pretty awful quality finish that you can see through. I was concerned polishing the lens would damage the silver finish very easily, so I just used some Autoglym Fast Glass on it to remove dirt. ETA - don't attack this part with anything other than water and a microfibre rag! The finish is VERY easy to remove!

The xenon bulbs were replaced with new old stock (allegedly) bought off ebay when I bought the car - they appear genuine, although don't seem to have some marks down the socket end that some sellers claim only OEM bulbs have. I suspect these are actually quite old bulbs in terms of shelf time, as the light up time is very similar to the original bulbs that came out 4 years ago! Takes almost 30 seconds for them to reach full brightness. They don't appear to have aged much anyway, so I'm happy with them. The salts still look an acceptable colour.







The main beam support/flash bulb is a Philips X-Treme Vision +100% bulb - they work well enough and a reasonable xenon colour match their life is about half that of a stock bulb, as you'd expect when they burn twice as bright, but for the application that's fine.



And now with the inner reflector carefully put back on and all the clips engaged, and bulbs refitted:





The sidelight LED sits nice and central in the housing, so that's good. It's designed to take a very lightweight filament bulb so I was concerned it would 'hang' a bit in the housing. A tip for anyone doing similar - DO NOT be tempted to try and tweak the 2 plastic barbs that hold the bulb holder in situ to try and get them to grip a bit better. They just snap......you can guess how I've found that out Just spoken to TPS and the wiring for the sidelight bulb is available from stock in Milton Keynes (8 on the shelf!) so I've ordered one to replace the one I've snapped and if they're more pliable I will order one for the other side. It comes as a wiring kit for the headlight but I'm hoping I can just persuade the wires out the back of the bulb holder and just change the plastic part. I'm not convinced until I see the part that it's possible to change in situ if it comes with all the wiring back to the plug!





I now need to attack the main lens with the polisher so that's ready to go back on the car when I collect the new clips tomorrow, plus hopefully the wiring. I'll try and grab a pic of it reinstalled with the old one for comparison. Will be very interesting to see if there's enough light coming out of the sidelight now to illuminate the main reflector, which I think is the purpose of the cutout in the sidelight reflector. The old filament bulbs didn't stand a chance of doing that, they're so weedy!
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2015 VW Golf GTI Performance Pack in Carbon Grey with black Vienna leather, tech pack (Discovery Pro nav & Dynaudio), DCC, factory towbar and retrofit RVC

Last edited by Adrian E; 9th December 2016 at 10:46 AM.
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  #18  
Old 16th January 2015, 12:30 PM
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Beautiful write up.

The good thing is that you decided to widen the hole so that the LED bulbs are exchangeable without having to put the headlight into pieces again.

I'm going to do the same mod when I dismantle my headlights again for the major service. Will change xenon bulbs for new OEM ones and will install LED lights like yours Adrian.
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Old 17th January 2015, 03:58 PM
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Well that's one finished and back in the car! All I need to find are the pack of 4 rubber grommets for the trim under the headlight, which I appear to have hidden.....

My earlier mentioned cockup with the plastic barbs holding the sidelight holder into the headlight:





Audi will sell you what they describe as a 'bulb carrier with cables' which is what's pictured above - I thought it might go back to the flash socket and then to a plug, but no it just has repair wires attached.....don't know what I must've been expecting for £12.69+vat

TPS recommended some repair connectors (000 979 940) for crimping the repair wires to the existing light loom. I did think about trying to separate the plastic housing from the terminals and just swapping that, but no amount of gentle persuasion seemed to be releasing any hidden tabs so I just decided to go with it and chop the wires.







You only need to trim a small amount of insulation off (I did a bit too much) as there's a 'dead end' in the middle of the connector. Quick squeeze with enough force to clamp it, but not so much as to tear through the insulation (I used standard crimping pliers for insulated connectors) and then get the heat gun out to shrink down the outer barrel, which helps support the wire in situ.

I fitted a new gasket between the body and lens - they're about £10 each but given how compressed the old one was they're worth doing. It didn't look like the clips were going to go back on very easily, but tucking them over the lens and then pushing on the centre of the clips will stretch them out enough to clip back over the ribbed plastic.



New (on the right in the pic if it's not 'blindingly' obvious vs old



Up close





The alleged colour matching old bulb for comparison!



It's a lot of aggro to go through but if your headlights could do with a refurb, or you just like a 'little' project it's not so bad to do I'm really pleased with how it's turned out - will have to wait and see what they look like in the dark with the headlights on as well!

Adrian
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2015 VW Golf GTI Performance Pack in Carbon Grey with black Vienna leather, tech pack (Discovery Pro nav & Dynaudio), DCC, factory towbar and retrofit RVC
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  #20  
Old 17th January 2015, 05:26 PM
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Some comparison shots in the dark!








Quite noticeable how much better the illumination of the nearside of the road is with the cleaned up lens and reflector
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2011 S5 Sportback in Phantom Black with black Super Sports leather, 9x20s, tech pack high, adaptive xenon plus, intelligent key, memory seats pack, sunroof, B&O, Audi Drive Select & quattro Sports Diff, DAB, parking system plus

2015 VW Golf GTI Performance Pack in Carbon Grey with black Vienna leather, tech pack (Discovery Pro nav & Dynaudio), DCC, factory towbar and retrofit RVC
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