tweev

I have a 2009 A3. I'm currently living in the US (bought it here) and plan on moving back to canada in a few months. I see that DRL are required to import the car into Canada - what a pain in the ****!

Anyway, took my car to the dealer here and they spent an hour trying to do that but no luck. Obviously this has been done before - anyone have any experience with this?

I searched the forums and found a few hacks but I thought there may be an 'audi sanctioned method'.

Thanks!

gurvir44

Go to Module 09 (Central Electrical), recode to ###XY, where:
X = DRL
0 – Halogen without DRL
1 – Halogen with DRL
2 – Bi-Xenon with DRL
3 – Bi-Xenon without DRL
4 – Bi-Xenon with DRL / tail light / license plate light

Y = Locale
1 – Rest of World / Nordic Countries / Denmark / Croatia / Baltic Countries with Bi-Xenon
2 – Nordic Countries / Denmark / Croatia / Baltic Countries without Bi-Xenon
3 – USA / Canada with Bi-Xenon
4 – Canada without Bi-Xenon
5 – Special Vehicles

Make Y- 4 and X what ever you want. Once you click apply, your lights should turn on when ignition is on.

tweev

Thanks! That's is really helpful.

I'll pass along that information to the local Audi tech. Hopefully it's the information he needs to fix the problem. Odd that I'm doing the homework to fix the car, that's what I thought I was paying them to do.

To his credit though, he did spend an hour trying to fix it, and when he couldn't, didn't charge me for the time. They did offer to try again but warned that playing with the base code was fraught with risk and that it was easy to screw things up. Hopefully this information will make things go much smoother.

If I may ask, how do you know this?

gurvir44

I had to do it on my a4, the previous owner disabled them. I copied and pasted from a4rob's post because its clear, hope he dosent mind. Once you change the country code to canada, the lights should instantly turn on while ignition is on. Good luck!

tweev

If it's just that, that will be great. I just don't understand why it's such a big deal. I mean isn't there a Audi software manual that all service centers must have?

Go to index, find change DRL - here is how you do it... Odd, I really don't get it.

Hopefully it's the same process for the A3 as the A4.

Thanks again!

gurvir44

Should be, it is the same for vw passat, audi a6 and acouple more. Might be a little diffrent but the audi tech should find his way through.

tweev

I wrote to the dealer with this information and they said 'they'd look into it'.

Can you do this with a VAG-COM?

Maybe I should just pick one of those up (or find someone in Santa Barbara that has one).

gurvir44

Yea that's what your supposed to use. That tutorial is intended for vag com

JTrizzo

When I imported my car from the states (I live in Winnipeg), the dealer changed it over to a canadian car (enabling drl) in 2 minutes and didn't charge me a thing. I find it quite odd that the tech at your dealership spent an hour with no luck. I have heard the tech in Winnipeg is quite good, but I figured a simple change with the computer would be basic knowledge among Audi technicians. Is that an unrealistic expectation?

Last weekend I enabled opening and closing the windows via remote for my friend's A4 and it took no time at all.

tweev

I know right? Then after the appointment they told me it was impossible.... Umm... I'm sure if it was impossible there would be holy hell on the forums about pissed off Audi owners who had to sell their cars when they moved to Canada. Ridiculous! To their credit though, they did not charge me for the hour time they spent trying to fix it. They made it sound like that for them working with the codes can be a pain in the butt because Audi won't even tell them what a lot of the coding does. Thanks for the support guys....

Anyway, the Audi dealer guys are looking into it (although I sent them the helpful information that was posted above) and I guess they'll give me a quote. I agree, it's a 5 minute job so I hope they don't come back to me with a $600 quote or something. If so, I'll continue to try to find someone with a Vag-com in or near Santa Barbara or I'll just buy one myself (on a side not is it a soft or hard G?)

I'd also like to add the window mod like you did and also the speedometer needle sweep at start-up if possible.

I do, however, have to admit that I'm a little Leary about playing with my car's computer code. I hope there is no option to 'rm -r *.*'!

Thanks for the post.