Facelift Brake Lights

[daandaman]

I will receive a new inner light this week and I'll open it up to find out.

[daandaman]

I can confirm that in a non facelift d3 the inner facelift brakelights illuminate.

Somebody with a facelift from factory please confirm if his inner lights also have Ambers functional besides the reversing lamp??

[Turbo Tony]

I can confirm the facelift inner lights do not light up when indicating - that's reserved for the outer lights.

...Shame, really. I think they would have looked really good.

[daandaman]

Now I'm really curious to find out if it has led bulbs in place

[Turbo Tony]

I inspected mine pretty closely and I can't see any LEDs in that section.

I would love to be wrong though!

[daandaman]

I must also say that I don't see the LED like little yellowish square in the little bump inside the reflector

[Norretal]

Originally Posted by Delboy

It's because the board can't monitor each individual led, instead it monitors the function as a whole so when it gets to a point where they are mostly not working you get a bulb failure warning.

That's what gappened on my pre facelift tail lights.

As to why the entire lights not working is a strange one.

These lights are one of the weak points of the cars tbh and I am on my second set in a two year ownership as they always get condensation building up in them.

They are sealed units too so it much you can do with them.

Just wanted to add my own findings on these facelift rear lights. I had one fail (NS) due to water build-up in it. They're approximately three years old, as the previous owner (IT) fitted them during his ownership of the car. I've noticed the condensation for ages and heard the experiences of others with these so I felt it somewhat inevitable that I'd have to replace them at some time.

I fancied doing all four but money restraints and an upcoming MOT meant common sense prevailed and I only ordered the NS outer. I ordered on Sunday from Spareto (Thanks Rick ) and it arrived Wednesday and I fitted it within ten minutes without a problem. What I did notice when removing the power supply was when I turned it over water poured out all over my hand, quite a lot of water in fact. I looked closely at the top edge or seam and can't see an obvious opening at all, and running it under a tap doesn't seem to enable water ingress, so maybe pressure washing is a contributing factor??

Anyway, I've decided that running a thin seam of clear silicone along the groove on the top edge might be a worthwhile exercise to prevent any future ingress, anyone tried this already? I'll also be checking closely for water in future as I suspect if I'd noticed the level building up I'd have been able to empty it and prevent failure and avoid buying a new one. At £167 they're a relative bargain compared to Audi prices but I don't want to be shelling out every three years or so for what seems a design fault.