A month ago, I noticed several LEDs died in left turn indicator. They worked for 8 months since purchase, and once again, I vowed to buy any Chinese accessories. I decided to look again for OSRAM LEDdriving DMI and very suprisingly bought them on Allegro for ~50€. And since I needed to disassemble the shells, I also bought a pair of electrochromic mirrors for €140. I needed only the missing right one, but the seller was selling them both. The lot was there for a year, but no one found it because of incorrect partnumbers in the description. ☝️

Blinkers comparison

From top to bottom: VAG, China, OSRAM

I was curious how they work, so I connected both strips to 12V and recorded slo-mo. OSRAM has fewer diodes in the line, but they are bigger. There are notches inside the plastic to diffuse light, and as it fills up, the brightness increases. In addition (this shows real engineering, not just copying a form), there is a separate LED at the end of the line which lights up at the same time as the first one and provides an indication to the side and rear of the car while the entire strip is being filled.

Demo on the car:

The tip on the reverse side of the turn signal fits firmly into the mirror housing. Nothing sticks out anywhere, unlike Chinese indicators.

At night, OSRAM blinkers are much brighter than the Chinese ones. They create a massive orange spot on the side of the car and overlight the stripes in the headlights.

Right Side Electrochromic Mirror

In my previous post about the left mirror installation, I shared all the part numbers, wiring diagram for the interior windshield mirror and a video of mirror shells disassembling.

Unlike the left side, pre-facelifted cars have no wiring and no connector to plug in an electrochromic mirror on the right side. The unexpected problem becomes to find a small 2-pin connector with a seal. It is the JAE MX19002S51 and does not have an official VAG part number. My friend Michael M18 gifted me one. You may also refer to his post about a similar retrofit.

Connections

To lay a new harness, you need to remove the bass speaker and use its hole to thread everything from above. Three small rubber caps could be handy to look thru them inside the door. Main thing — the mirror wiring goes around the power window rail and is attached to the metal with two clips.

🛑 💀 You can’t just pull the harness directly to the mirror arm. The window going down will cut it!

I spent several hours and a lot of sweat to wire everything on the right path. Both clips had to be replaced.

Two new wires enter the T16 connector of the door module on pins 2 / 6 and leave it through the T20 connector (pins 8 / 17) to the rubber band of the door (T27, pins 2 🟢 / 3 🔵). There is always a connection between T20 and T27 in the door harness. You only need to add wires from the mirror to the module.

I have added 2nd and 3rd pins in the door rubber band. Those connectors use MCON 1.2mm pins which you can’t buy as separate parts, but VAG sells them as repair wires 000 979 020 E. I went the other way and bought 20 pairs on AliExpress.

After entering the car’s body harness goes thru the right pillar to the central mirror, similarly as I did for the left side.

Demo

In total, this project took all my weekend.

Stay tuned…