I have, in my possession, OEM LED taillights

Question and it may be answered in 100+ posts, but I didn't see it plainly evident in my brief skim..

Are the LED lights that are on sale on eBay that advertise "Error Free" from China - are these equivilent to the OEM lights with rewiring and coding required or are these plug and play for the North American cars?

Link to one of those sets of lights?

They will plug in and turn on, but they won't work "properly" without some significant wiring modifications.

This is plug and play: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtjde71lBO8
Notice they behave like the stock lights and do not have the proper brightness (inner fixtures run at 100% when the parking lights are on).

This is after wiring mods: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Udul36tZdyY
Notice they behave like an Audi's LED lights and the intensity is correct.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/2012-2014-Y...fits=Model:Passat&hash=item4d1c6cb416&vxp=mtr

Advertised as "error free" however it's also advertised as "Wiring needed" as well as "The tail lamps have the same connections and wires with the original cars.
It is play and plug."

My guess is wiring is required, however I was wondering if these are the same as people have bought and installed or if they are pretty much a knock off of the Chinese version of the NMS lights.

Those look just like the real lights... so yes, extensive rewire required.

-J

dzcad90 said:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/2012-2014-Y...fits=Model:Passat&hash=item4d1c6cb416&vxp=mtr

Advertised as "error free" however it's also advertised as "Wiring needed" as well as "The tail lamps have the same connections and wires with the original cars.
It is play and plug."

My guess is wiring is required, however I was wondering if these are the same as people have bought and installed or if they are pretty much a knock off of the Chinese version of the NMS lights.

Click to expand...

These are not plug and play. The connectors in your car will not even mate with the LED lights. The Ebay auction you linked is misleading, these are not plug and play. There have been 2 ways these have been connected - as compu_85 states, or as I did, with extensive rewiring and coding changes, as described here: Lighting DIY

compu_85 said:

Those look just like the real lights... so yes, extensive rewire required.

-J

Click to expand...

Yep - that the set I just installed to replace the cracked lens. So for me, it was P&P, this time.

Bummer. After reading the great write up on this I'm torn.

I do want the sweet LED tails. I do not however want to start hacking away at the front of the car to get the DRL functionality restored.

Decisions....

dzcad90 said:

Bummer. After reading the great write up on this I'm torn.

I do want the sweet LED tails. I do not however want to start hacking away at the front of the car to get the DRL functionality restored.

Decisions....

Click to expand...

You have options.

Norm's way is not the only way. You can do what Jason and I did and add the Curt 56201 trailer lighting controller and some additional wiring in the trunk to get the tail lights to function like a modern Audi (all-red, no amber turn signal) without modifying any wiring to the BCM or changing any coding (which means no broken DRLs).

Both ways are a lot of work... it just depends on your preference.

But, as 'dub noted, our method makes no changes to the car's wiring harness. Just extra stuff added on top.

-J

compu_85 said:

But, as 'dub noted, our method makes no changes to the car's wiring harness. Just extra stuff added on top.
-J

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Yeah. But the bi-color LEDs are awesome Why can't this be as simple as my MkV was to install the Bi Color LEDs?

Props to both camps for figuring out how to get these working. I'm still on the fence.

Passats don't come with bi-color LEDs. The amber turn signals are conventional incandescent bulbs, which was part of the reason why I wanted all-red Audi-style LED turn signals (more visibility).

This also allowed us to do quad reverse lights utilizing the existing reverse lights in addition to the amber turn signal location in the housings.

dzcad90 said:

Bummer. After reading the great write up on this I'm torn.

I do want the sweet LED tails. I do not however want to start hacking away at the front of the car to get the DRL functionality restored.

Decisions....

Click to expand...

Hacking just for DRL's? Don't think so. A couple of relays restored the DRL's to my car. In sum, with all the work done, I'd call it an improvement, with some assembly required. All the hard work has been done, you just need to determine which method to go forward with. Compu_85's method is easier to implement, IMO and easily reversible (although I don't know why you would outside of a lease arrangement). I chose the method I did as I was determined to get amber turns on the 4 corners, but it requires a lot more work to implement, which is easily duplicated in a fraction of the time it took me. Because I'd do something to change the coding, and find it had other consequences to deal with, but that is all water under the bridge now. It's been a year since I converted to LED taillights, and other than bumping into something in my own garage, trouble-free. I'd say that if you had everything needed at the beginning of this, you could do it in a weekend.

Decisions! I'd agree that you can knock the project out in a weekend regardless of which option you go with.

Just got a few sets in from different suppliers. Making a harness tonight and starting the journey.

The overhead console "upgrade" to my 2013 broke the proverbial seal on modding my 2013, so now I've got the bug. Doing the LED tails and HIDs too. Imported a few different versions to try and see which are best.

Looking forward to what you find

Did you get a set of the AFS headlights?

-J

New interesting problem developed... Has anyone seen this yet?

Occasionally when sitting at a LONG red light with my foot on the brakes, I will get a BOW and a message to check the left rear marker light.

As soon as my foot comes off the brake, the BOW and warning goes away.

I haven't had a chance to see if any light is actually going out in the rear because it usually happens when I am sitting at a light all by myself. So I can't hold my foot on the brake and get out to check. And I haven't had a chance to actually scan the car yet.

Just wondering if anyone who has had them for a while has seen any errant BOW's with these taillights yet.

Ours has started flashing BOWs all the time now :/ I know the lights still work properly and haven't looked into it further.

-J

Fixmy59bug said:

New interesting problem developed... Has anyone seen this yet?

Occasionally when sitting at a LONG red light with my foot on the brakes, I will get a BOW and a message to check the left rear marker light.

As soon as my foot comes off the brake, the BOW and warning goes away.

I haven't had a chance to see if any light is actually going out in the rear because it usually happens when I am sitting at a light all by myself. So I can't hold my foot on the brake and get out to check. And I haven't had a chance to actually scan the car yet.

Just wondering if anyone who has had them for a while has seen any errant BOW's with these taillights yet.

Click to expand...

compu_85 said:

Ours has started flashing BOWs all the time now :/ I know the lights still work properly and haven't looked into it further.

-J

Click to expand...

No Issues here!

Fixmy59bug said:

Jason,

They are a perfect match and everything works great.

Irish,

On the OEM taillights, pin 3 is used as the rear side marker light (the single LED on the side of the taillight) and pin 1 is used for the single filament bulb which is dimmed for rear parking light and full brightness for brake and turn.

When making the wiring harness adaptors, I hooked up pin 3 on the body harness to pin 1 on the taillight, and pin 1 on the body harness to pin 2 on the taillight. I did this because I thought pin 1 on the taillight was running lights and pin 2 was brake/turn.

After Jason understood what I did wrong, he explained I should clip the wire going to pin 1 because the brake light will be dimmed by the BCM to serve as parking lights.

Click to expand...

Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but do you have a diagram and parts list for how you did this on your 2013?

Id like my lights to function audi style with the DRLs up front. Did you use resistors? What specific coding did you change? Any BOW issues?

Guys, forum newbie here. I have a real situation that Ross-Tech has been unable to help me with (despite great responsiveness).

Net: I have a 2012 Passat NMS SE 6 speed MT and inadvertently modified Byte 18. I recovered my original long string and inserted A0 (since 00 masks the "true" value), but ever since doing so, I've had a bulb out light and a warning message about check right and left turning lights. As you know, an SE does not have foglights from the factory, so no turn lights are possible. I've checked and rechecked everything in all of the other BCM string and nothing is checked about fog lights. (Besides which, I reverted to my ORIGINAL long string, putting in A0 instead of 00. After doing so, ALL settings reverted to where I started BEFORE plugging in the Ross-Tech Micro-CAN cable.)

Question: Does anyone know of any Byte 18 value for a STOCK 2012 NMS SE (without foglights) other than A0?

Thanks!

I believe our car is coded for A0, and is an SE w/o fog lights.

Coding: 6F200EBBDC2B28D408080001360000C802F1A00041A00520558860040C70

You could try un-checking the "turning lights via fog lights" bit.

-J

Coding

Thanks, but tried all of that. I'm mystified. I've put back in all of the codes, replacing 00 with A0 in the original string (since supposedly that is what belongs in the "masked" Byte 18 for an NMS Passat). EVERYTHING else reverts to pre-VAG COM messing about except the BOW and the "check right turning light" and "check left turning light" messages. Clearly the BCM thinks I have fog lights (because it thinks I have turning lights). But I don' think that my SE BCM (baseline model) even HAS provision for fog lights. Since to retro-fit a fog light kit requires a separate relay wired to the headlight switch, and no turning lights are possible. (Or so I read.)

Totally stumped. I tried inserting the A0 both via the long coding helper and also by inserting it in the long string myself. Both times, the BCM accepted the coding. But no change in the BOW or the messages.

I also tried the reset code in Byte 18 then reinstalling A0 both ways as per above. Now I also have "check right brake light" and "check left brake light" in addition to the driving light messages. OH NO!

Thanks for any help, advice, thoughts, things to try!

Solved! Operator error - duh. I hadn't been properly erasing the DTCs that had cropped up when the erroneous Byte 18 value had been mistakenly entered. Thus the error messages (and BOW) that kept appearing even though the Byte 18 value was reset to the proper A0 value.

Once the BCM DTCs were properly cleared, all warnings promptly disappeared and all is now well.

Sorry for the bandwidth, but I am posting this just in case some other newbie has a similar problem in the future.

Hello, who has the taillights connection schemes?

file hosting deleted old information

Are my images not up anymore?

http://forums.tdiclub.com/showthread.php?t=352634

compu_85 said:

Are my images not up anymore?

http://forums.tdiclub.com/showthread.php?t=352634

Click to expand...

I want diagram with resistor , without curt(
Please help me