Recently I went down a rabbit hole where I found out there are LED air vents made to fit the 8V A3. Think of the Merc-style turbo air vents, that's the design.
Yes, this is Chinese AliExpress gear, but honestly, the quality is completely on par with the OEM vents and I was pleasantly surprised!
The click sound for opening/closing is even better than my original ones, and the dampening when changing the vent direction is a bit stronger than OEM so it does feel well made.
Air vents in question: https://vi.aliexpress.com/item/10050...yAdapt=glo2vnm
To note:
- The brightness and colors are adjustable, you can find a very good sweet spot and they are genuinely not too bright even at max power.
- The app that pairs with the control module worked seamlessly on the first try, it can be a bit janky but it's relatively easy to set things up the way you want it to, and there is a bunch of customization
Now on with the actual install, it goes through a couple of phases but to anyone with even a sliver of experience working on the interior of these cars it should prove to be easy.
I'm a complete beginner at this sort of stuff and it took me about 2 hours to finish the entire ordeal and clean everything up.
Must have tools: Plastic trim remover kit and a cable/cord which can be used to feed the power cables through the interior, some insulating tape, T-taps or posi-taps to connect the wires
Installation process:
- Pop out all of the old air vents, actually quite easy to do, just use the plastic trim removers bit by bit. Do it slowly and carefully not to break anything and they should just pop out.
- Remove the center console trim. Some suggest to put the car in N but we managed to remove the entire thing while the DSG was in P. The center console takes some convincing to pop out so don't be afraid to give it some strength, there's a couple of videos on YT showing how it's done.
- Disconnect all the cables from underneath the center console so the plastic can be lifted up. You will also need to unclip the gear shifter knob leather frame so you can move the center console over the gear stick and set it aside completely.
- Now to feed the wires through, we used a steel wire to navigate where we needed the LED cables to go, so we taped the ends to the steel wire so it can be pulled through. These are tight spaces so you need something stronger to find the correct way through all the plastic.
- The LED cables branch out in 4 ways for each vent, and one middle connector which goes through in between the vents -> down behind the AC and underneath the cup holders. This is where you will connect it to the control module received in the package.
- Run the central wire down to the cup holders behind all the trim, then feed the corresponding wires to the side vents. Do this using the same method with a hard wire since you need to meander your way through a lot of stuff until it gets to the air vent exit.
For us, this was the part that took the longest, it's just trial and error until you finally thread the damn thing to where it needs to go.
- Once you have all the cables in place, connect them to your new air vents and just pop them in, they have the top side marked and they are custom made to fit so they click in perfectly.
- Now we need to tap into a power source for the control module, we did this by tapping into the 12V socket next to the cup holders.
- You will see the cable plugged into the bottom straight down that has three wires. Red, white and brown. Brown is ground wire and red is the one that provides the power.
- To tap into these, we used simple T-tap wire connectors and crimped the ends so the wires don't disconnect. We also taped the ends over with insulating tape because you never know.
Link for T-taps: https://a.aliexpress.com/_Ey0gWbQ
The package comes with a double sticky pad to stick the control module somewhere underneath the cup holders wherever you find the nicest.
Return all of the trim back to it's original place and there you go, you now have fully functional and customizable LED air vents.
I've done this just a few days ago so haven't had the time to take a few good pictures but I'll add them here as soon as I take some.
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