Brighter tails with VAG-COM, good with tint

[GotRS?]

First, props to John Stahmann over on AW for this

To increase the brightness of the three tail light bulbs (B7), go into 09-Cent.Elec., choose Adaptation-10, then on Channels 02; 03; 04 you can set the brightness in % for each of Brake; Tail; Rear-Fog bulbs.

Enter your new % value (the range allowed and standard setting come up in a pop-up info box, max is 40%), press Test then Save if you like it.

I found all my brightness' were set much lower than "standard" so I bumped them all up to 30%. Huge difference. My tint is fairly dark and I feel much better for doing this. I think it's a good reply to have in mind if you get stopped for tinted tails. "It's a feature of the car to allow for tint!"

Just to check one more thing, I set the brake light brightness level to the highest allowed, 40%, then pressed the brake. They still go way brighter (to 100% maybe, duh), so there is no worry that you'll have no brake lights by max'ing them at 40% brightness as tail lights. Same thing goes for rear-fogs too. There is a DRL brightness setting in a higher channel number too if you run those.

[boravr6]

will the bulb in the brake lights handle the increase in power?

[GotRS?]

will the bulb in the brake lights handle the increase in power?

It's a 20W (guessing) bulb running at limited current to be a tail light. In the old days it would be a dual filament bulb with a 5W for tail and a 20W for brake.

This only increases the low power setting.

Good question that many will have

[b spot]

Off topic, but does anyone know if you can VAG your HID's to be your DRL's?

[jstahmann]

The max intensity value (not percentage) that can be specified for the brake light brightness is 40. Mine was at 22 from the factory.

b spot - You may be able to code your HIDs to be the DRLs but it would be in a different coding area within Vag-Com. For example, if you code your car to have Canadian DRLs, it uses the fog lights. I'll play around and see if I can find the correct combination.

Here's the original post I made at AudiWorld -

I went to turn off my TPMS so when I run my winter tires I don't have the annoying warnings and decided to play around in VAG-COM a bit. Found a few little things....

In 09 - Central Electronics you find the adaptation channels for your lighting as follows:

02-Brake Light Dimming - Mine was set to 22, and according to VAG-COM it has an upper limit of 40. I tried several different values thinking that it might make the brake lights brighter if I had a higher value. I even had my wife watch the brake lights (with my foot on the brake) as I changed values. She didn't notice a big change, but she noticed it getting brighter.

03-Tail Light Dimming - Again, mine was set well below the described upper limit. I didn't mess with this one as I don't mind how the tail lights look now.

04-Rear Fog Light Dimming - Once again, mine was set well below the listed upper limit. I increased mine to the upper limit.

05-DRL Dimming (Halogen) - Doesn't apply to our cars as we have the Bi-Xenons. There is a value of 92% intensity in there.

06-DRL Dimming (Bi-Xenon) - Mine was set at 92% intensity from the factory, but I don't ever use my DRLs. However, I do like the dimmed look when I run just my city lights so I changed the value from 92 to 60%, which made my DRLs dim down to 60% intensity. So, now I may actually run my DRLs since they are more dim.

07-DRL Fogs (Canada) - value for the intensity for Canadian DRLs, which are the Fog Lights.

One thing I did find interesting is that Channel 16, which is the Fog Light Cold Diagnosis is switchable on our cars (it was not switchable on my B7 A4). The Cold Diagnosis causes the system to test if there is a functioning bulb in the fog lights without turning the lights on, and when you disable this you don't get the warning if bulbs are burned out or missing from the fogs (ie DTM edition cars with no Fogs). I left my coding for this alone, but if someone wanted to remove their fogs, or potentially even replace their fogs with S6 LEDs, this could help avoid any issues requiring in-line resistors on that circuit. Not positive, though.

John

[Andrew149]

wanted to bump this since its the first time ive seen this mod.