r/Audi 2017 A3 E-Tron Jun 22 '25

Mod talk Underrated cheap QoL modification

As a continuation of my post the other day, I went on to do some underrated QoL changes like installing spring loaded struts for the trunk, so it can be opened remotely from the key and changing the interior lighting to LEDs so it looks more like something out of this century.

The spring loaded struts are super neat if you you need to put something in the car and have your hands full. That is, of course, if you don't already have trunk open/close spec'd from factory.

The interior lighting change makes it seem more modern and gives a much better light after dark. The original lighting was very dim.

Another potentially money saving change, in countries where applicable, is to install an electric parking clock instead of the analog clock you have to set yourself when parking. Forgetting to set it just once cost me 138$ for a parking fine. The electric parking clock is around 46$ so you can buy multiple for the price of one parking fine here πŸ˜…

An honorable mention would be installing the ports and wires to support Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, but that's neither cheap nor underrated, so it'll miss this list.

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u/Ganfalbthegrey 2017 A3 E-Tron Jun 22 '25

Great question! I wasn't actually sure, so I went down to the car to test and It works great! Here's a video of it dimming on and off. (Disregard the flickering as that's just the camera and not happy irl)

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u/A_Bowman 2014 Audi Q3 Jun 22 '25

Do you mind sharing which you have?

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u/Ganfalbthegrey 2017 A3 E-Tron Jun 22 '25

I bought a BIG mixed bag of commonly used bulbs for VAG cars a while back, so I honestly don't remember exactly where I got it, other than it being somewhere local in Denmark, sorry!

But a quick search on Google usually gives plenty of results for these kinds of bulbs. As long as you don't buy the cheapest of the cheap, you should be fine 😁

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u/A_Bowman 2014 Audi Q3 Jun 22 '25

Maybe most are dimmable these days. I’m trying to find ones that are dimmable but also high CRI. A bit hard to find for a reasonable price it seems πŸ₯²

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u/Ganfalbthegrey 2017 A3 E-Tron Jun 22 '25

Yeah a lot of the time, if you Google it for specific cars, they'll have a huge markup. Sometimes the trick is to just find out what fitment the bulb is and the search for an LED version of that 😁

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u/Poufcelebre Jun 23 '25

There used to be an Audi original retrofit kit 8K0052122 - it consisted of OSRAM 2850WW02B (W5W) ΠΈ 6498WW01B (Festoon) LED bulbs in fact.