probably heard it a million times before.

..but recently picked up some Hella R32 tails w/ rear fog light and amber turns.

I was reading on vortex and just wanted to clarify that to make the amber bulbs work as my turn signal there has to be some splicing and long coding done w/ vag-com, right?

most of the topic I found on vortex were vague and all over the place between rear fog and amber turns..

hope that will help

link:http://www.golfmkv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2140:

haha yeah thats the one I was looking at actually.

so basically you have to splice+re-code to get the amber turns? theres no 2 ways about it right?

I know the rear fog stuff and im gonna be doing that this weekend hopefully

Correct.

The reason you have to do the splice is because your 2 regular bulbs (the big round ones) are going to be sharing running light and break light duty. The middle bulb is going to be working as a blinker only. So you basically have to splice the two outer round bulbs into one circuit and then put the signal light on another.

Reason why you have to vag-com it is so it knows you're running separate signals as well as that there are 4 total brake bulbs + running lights.

yeah I was aware of the vag-com part, but thanks for clearing up the wiring part darcness.

Hopefully everything will be done by sunday so expect a thread update coming soon

Sounds good.

Main reason I know is because I've found a way to mod the OEM bulb holders. I can now do TRUE R32 style tails for around $110. Not a bad deal I would think. Only thing I don't do so far is rear fog, but that could be easy. Just get the red lens and I'd be set.

There's a way to avoid splicing of wires for the Euro bulb holders, like those in the R32 tails...

You'd merely need a vagcom to turn off the dimmer for the turning signals, otherwise the ambers would be plug and play after modifying the wire housing. By moving the wire from port 1 to port 3, I think...

Otherwise, you can take some plain trigger wiring and place it on the euro bulb holder board to bridge a connection. Takes care of the splicing work, and is easily reversible.

For your R32 ones its pretty much the same as below, with a few changes depending where your amber bulbs are.

Actually don't take my word for it, I haven't seen the insides of R32 LED tails. I know this works for OEM GTI taillights though.




It's easy to do.

Pop open your taillights, remove the bulb holder.
The bulb holder is pretty easy to figure out, there are 4 pins.
One of the pins, if you trace all the metal traces, manages to touch BOTH bulbs, that would be the GROUND pin. If you plugged the wire from your car in, the BROWN wire would plug into that pin.

If you take a look at the plug coming out of the car, there are three wires. One is brown. Two are different colors. Its pretty easy to figure out which wire does what.

First, take a look at the bulb holder and figure out which bulb is on the OUTER side of the taillight. That one is going to be the brake AND blinker bulb right? So that means the outer half and inner half of the taillight run on SEPARATE WIRES. Hey, what do you know, you've got TWO more wires in that plug right?
VW brake lights work by adjusting voltage to the bulb, not like other cars that use dual-filament bulbs. That is both a pain in the ass and a good thing, it simplifies wiring a lot.

Back to the bulb holder.

Now you know which side blinks, follow the metal trace on the outer bulb that DOESNT go to the brown pin (remember we figured out the brown wire/pin = ground = touches both bulbs?) So now you've got the POSITIVE or SIGNAL wire that the car uses to tell the outer bulb to blink, as well as when to turn on when youre braking, have the headlights on, etc.

Lets call this pin the BLINKER pin.

Next, trace the INNER bulb, again not the one that leads to the grounding/brown pin...
This third pin is the BRAKING pin. Since we know that the inner segment of the taillight NEVER blinks, it only lights up with the headlights and brakes.

So now we've figured out three pins, three wires. What about the 4th pin?

If you follow the 4th pin, it seems to just dead end somewhere around that plastic tower-thing in the middle of the bulb carrier. If you notice, theres another dead-end lead on the other side... and it links up to the BROWN pin!

Alright, so there is seemingly an unused pin here that goes nowhere, and there is no wire attached to that pin at all (Wiring harness only has three wires right?)

What you can do is, add another single filament bulb to the bulb carrier, and attach it to both of those unused leads. One side connects to the 4th pin, one side connected to the brown pin. You can find a generic bulb holder at any auto store, they should carry something. I used yellow sidemarker bulbs, 12v 4W bulbs if i remember correctly. If you choose to use LEDs you might get a bulb out. Just hot glue the bulb holder to that middle post and you should be good. If you really wanted you could buy the extremely expensive bulb holders from VW or make your own or whatever... just mount the bulb there.

Next, take the plug ON the car, the one with three wires. Remember which wire connects to the BLINKER pin? You want to move it (yes, actually pull the wire/spade connector OUT of the plastic plug, and move it to another slot). You want to put it in the slot that pin 4 would connect with.

So what you basically just did, is you added another bulb to the light, and moved the BLINKER pin so now the MIDDLE bulb that you added will blink and brake.

So what happens to the original BLINKER pin? Now the entire outer half of the taillight doesn't light up at all.

Easy. You want the outer half to do exactly what the inner half did originally right? Light up with headlights and brake only? If you examine the bulb holder, the two MIDDLE pins are what I termed BLINKER and BRAKING. Now that BLINKER is no longer used (You moved the connector on the plug remember) you can just tie BLINKER and BRAKING together. To do this, take a length of wire, wrap it around the middle pins (Theres a pretty easy spot to do this, right next to the plug part on the holder). What that does is ties BLINKER and BRAKING pins together, and since BRAKING is the only pin getting any signal... you've now got a outer and inner half of the taillight working together as a braking light.

No splicing, no adding another pin to the harness... its essentially the same thing except we did all the modification inside the bulb holder, and moved a pin on the car harness.

Now, lastly. You turn on your blinker, woohoo yellow turn signals!
Press the brake. WTF. Your yellow blinker lights up with the rest of the brake light (The full circle). Why? Remember that in stock configuration the outer half of the taillight served as a blinker, brake, and running light. Since we added another bulb... braking lights up the now-yellow bulb.

You need VAGCOM to fix this.
Go into Module 09 (Central Electronics) and take a look at your long coding.
It might look something like this:
14 01 8E 23 40 04 15 00 00 14 00 00 00 14 00 00 00 28 77 0B 5C

We care about the segment that looks like this 14 00 00 00 14
Change the second 14 to 00 so it looks like this: 14 00 00 00 00

Click Do it!
and you're done.

FocalPoint said:

There's a way to avoid splicing of wires for the Euro bulb holders, like those in the R32 tails...

You'd merely need a vagcom to turn off the dimmer for the turning signals, otherwise the ambers would be plug and play after modifying the wire housing. By moving the wire from port 1 to port 3, I think...

Otherwise, you can take some plain trigger wiring and place it on the euro bulb holder board to bridge a connection. Takes care of the splicing work, and is easily reversible.

Click to expand...

just thought I would post an update.

But I followed this method and swapped the wires from port 1-3 iirc(im too lazy to go abck and look), and cut the wire needed and the amber blinkers do function.

they lock/unlock when I press the button and work as turn signals, but they remain on as the parking lights when I turn on my headlights witch.

Just need to go back and finish it up with vagcom and I should be set..

yes, you need to vag off byte 13 i think. Manually change the value to 0 in the long coding.

good alex make sure you remember everything on this i need to get mine done as well...

Just did this over the weekend following bigbadvoodooguru's DIY. Works great and looks great! I must say the center amber signal looks much much better than the outer half circle signal.

But I'm scared my solders are gonna break off from hitting bumps on the road. My first time soldering anything. :iono:

You could've simply tucked the bare wire ends under the metal circuitry. Didn't have to solder mine.

I think they changed the bulb holders a little bit for the '09. There isn't really a spot to tuck a wire under. Also had to solder wires from the bulb holder to the metal.

Posted to keep track....