Golf R LED Taillights

I like the look of the factory LED taillights on our Passat VR6, enough to retrofit a set of Mk7 European-spec Golf R tinted tail lights. Fortunately I waited long enough for the new Mk7.5 facelift LED taillights. I slightly prefer the pattern of the running lights to the Mk7 LEDs. The dynamic amber turn signals are rather slick in action, though I kinda wish it didn't crawl on hazards or remote lock/unlock. It has enough resolution (individual bulbs) that the crawl from inside to outside looks smoother and more dynamic than than a 1968 Mercury Cougar with three bulbs. This will be the future of VW design and I'm already seeing it on Audis, though in the US the dynamic turn signals are red instead of amber.

There are a number of DIY retrofits out there and Deutsche Auto Parts has come up with a plug-n-play-n-code Mk7.5 adapter harness solution. DAP also sells a complete Mk7.5 retrofit kit. Adding the Euro headlight switch (and more coding) can activate the largely unnecessary rear fog light.

The first video below discusses the LED taillight options DAP offers. The second is for the older Mk7 LED taillights, but it contains valuable advice for removing the plastic interior panels not discussed in the Mk7.5 DIY. The last two videos discuss the specific installation and coding of the Mk7.5 taillights.

The install was fairly easy, though I took my time and double-checked every pin-out and VAG-COM adaptation as I performed them. As such, it took more than the projected four hours. The upside was that I made no mistakes.

I noticed a few typos in the coding instructions from trivial capitalization (German capitalizes all nouns), some incorrect spaces and frequent misspelling of "Lasttyp" in the German language adaptation channel names. These resulted in some initial search failures until I became more familiar with the naming scheme. Regardless, the coding was not difficult but precision is important. My 2016 R used the 27NSL rear fog coding. Earlier cars code parts of channel 26NSL.

Initially I failed to get the rear fog light working. A little poking around in the Central Electrics Control Module coding turned up a setting for enabling my Euro switch's rear fog light position. In VAG-COM: Central Electrics Control Module → Coding → Byte 7 → set bit 4: "Light switch with Rear Fog Light(s) installed"