Hi guys im another new A3 owner! Stumbled across this awesome site a couple of weeks ago and after reading heaps of topics decided id sign up! I recently got my first A3 (what a fantastic car!), its a 2002 old shape but has the facelift headlights etc and its only a 1.9TDI but I do lots of driving for work so need to keep the fuel costs down!

I fancy doing a few subtle cosmetic mods to start with but nothing over the top. Im looking at bigger wheels/tyres 225/40/18s I think, harder suspension, S3 bumpers and then colour coding them. Then a new exhaust, possibly a Miltek system...

Ive come accross my first problem though! My A3 dosnt have front fogs and this is a must for me, I got a new A3 lower part bumper with fog light cut outs and two new fog lights from Audi. Ive been all over google looking for how to wire them up to the car. Not sure if anyone has attempted this before or if theres a DIY already posted?

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated and ill make a DIY for anyone whos interested when I come round to doing this!

Cheers guys!

 

Welcome!

I don't remember seeing anything about the foglight upgrade to your car. Maybe Rich or Dave would be able to help since they are Brits too? I suggest you chip your car first. There is a HUGE improvement on the 1.9TDI with just a chip. I know that you didn't mention it, but don't worry about the airbox mod for that car unless you get bigger injectiors. The stock air box is very efficient and your money is better spent elsewhere. The exhaust will give you a decent boost, and bigger injectors can be had for very little money. I had a 2002 TDI manual transmission with .205 injectors and the car was a monster, but still got excellent fuel mileage. Youdefinitely want to make sure that the timing belt was changed if your carhas 80k+ miles. That is the most important thing on that car. If it's close, then upgrade to the 100k mile belt, tensioner, and roller, then you can gain an extra 20k miles over the original set-up.

Cheers!

 

Thanks Chef! Its just had the timing belt changed at 72k miles and now its on 78k and im not sure what kind of belt was used. I am really interested in upgrading the performace and I have looked into getting it chipped but wasnt sure of what kind of power gains vs cost it offers, my A3 is only 100bhp and not being able to smoke a 316 is a sad thing!

If the fogs wernt an option on the car when it was new, does that mean I cant install them? I suppose I could always find a switch from an A3 that had fogs installed...

Thanks!

 

As you will know, front fog lights are activated on the normal headlight switch to the right side of the steering wheel. So if you wanted to have the option to turn them on/off independant of headlight position (i.e. side lights or full lights), then you would need this. Otherwise you could have them wired up to come on when you have full lights on...

I'm sure a localgarage would be able to do this pretty cheaply.

 

AFAIK, the central electronics controller may or may NOT support the fog light function. You would need to have a VAG-Com to adapt the lights if you had the proper controller. Also, as pointed out, you would need to have the proper headlight switch, but that is a very easy install and a fairly cheap part. As far as the wiring schematics go, that you would need help from Dave, our UK Audi Tech. Do a little research, and hopefully Dave will be able to help you out.

Cheers!

 

Thanks for all your help guys, ill have a think about how I want to wire these up, independantly or with the full beam head lights... Also, I swapped the Audi Concert 2 CD player with my previous Kenwood headunit but only the front speakers are working and no AM/FM radio reception either. Does anyone know if the Audi's need radio signal booster cables and im guessing the rear speakers and sub are amplified so is it just a question of finding and connecting the blue REM wires or is there an adapter floating around out there?

I asked Kenwood and they said there are so many different variations of Audi audio systems they couldnt help me... Tomorrow im going to look into ECU tuning and see whats on offer!

Anyway, thanks again! night

 

You are correct about the speakers. The fronts run off the head unit and the rears are active with the sub and amp in the boot. It should just be a case of connection the pre-outs on your Kenwood to the correct wiring on the audio loom. The rear of the Concert should have a label indicating which connections are which. I didn't lose radio reception though I understand their are radio booster adapters to cater for this.

There could well be an adapter. The Blaupunkt unit I used has a very similar audio loom/connection to the Concert so it was relatively easy, although on my 2002 A3, the loom runs through the CAN-BUS which means I loose GALA sound, screen brightness correction when I turn the headlights on &ignition on (had to manually lead a wirefrom the fuse box for this), The adapter for that (supplied by Blaupunkt) was £100, so I decided against it!