OEM LED Rears Flickering

[noisuf]

Hi Everyone,

I installed OEM rear LED lights on the R32 a few years back.

At some point in the last year, the right LEDs are flickering when indicating. It's hard to explain but it's like a group of leds flicker, they turn on and then off.......which makes me think it's not like a single LED failing.

Kinda like as if there's not enough current/voltage going to a certain area and gives until the next burst of power.

I've seen some VCDS/Vagcom coding for US cars that have three wires but mine did work initially.

I'll dig around VCDS tomorrow but was wondering if anyone has experienced this?

Cheers.

[piper26]

Do you mean a section of the ring or the whole ring not 'turning on strong' ??
If its only a section of the led ring then it is possible that the assembly circuit board. If its the whole ring and, or if you have noticed all the led functions playing up i.e indicator, tail and brake then it could be an earth pin/circuit issue.

[noisuf]

Had a play with bytes 09 to 13 as suggested around the net which changes the brightness of the lights......the LEDs are no longer flickering as much but some just don't indicate anymore, like two rows. Makes me think it's something to do with the coding. But still doesn't explain why it started happening after a couple of years.

Do you mean a section of the ring or the whole ring not 'turning on strong' ??
If its only a section of the led ring then it is possible that the assembly circuit board. If its the whole ring and, or if you have noticed all the led functions playing up i.e indicator, tail and brake then it could be an earth pin/circuit issue.

Gday. It's just a section of the whole ring, like two or three. As mentioned above, playing around byts 09 to 13 made it flicker less but also means a few don't turn amber during indicating.

[piper26]

Correct in saying that coding can change the operation as the pwm signal is changed for leds.
I was suggesting an electrical issue as like you say it happened after a period of time also that it is only a section inop.
It may be possible you have a faulty light assembly, unfortunate yes but it is a real possibility.

[noisuf]

Correct in saying that coding can change the operation as the pwm signal is changed for leds.
I was suggesting an electrical issue as like you say it happened after a period of time also that it is only a section inop.
It may be possible you have a faulty light assembly, unfortunate yes but it is a real possibility.

Thanks for you reply and suggestions. It's liveable for the time being......it's the mrs' car and she didn't notice it until I told her. And even when I did, she said it looked like a 'feature' pattern.

[piper26]

Haha, yea I would leave it until it fails completely or someone knocks it back for a rego check. For the price of the lights, if your mrs isnt too worried bout it then id get as much out of them as possible.

[noisuf]

Bumping my own thread. The lights haven't gotten worse over the past few years.

But I've seen more and more cars like passats with the similar LED setup suffering from the same flickering issue and also most of the time affecting the rear right.

I've done a bit of searching to see if there's any new ways of fixing and seems to be the same sort of suggested fixes ranging from led replacement, rusty connections or VCDS programming.

Anyone have any luck fixing without changing the lights?

When i have time, I'm going to swap the lights around temporarily to determine if it's light it the rear right.

[robbie]

PM me mate, maybe I can assist you with this as I've seen others.