Inner Tail Light Issue

[eveleth]

2012 A6 Prestige here. As the title says, having issues with my rear inner tail lights. Started with the left where the top LED strip intermittently stopped working. I got a new one for cheap and swapped it out which fixed the problem. Fast forward 3 months and the right inner tail light is doing the same exact thing. Turning off the car and turning it back on removes the warning in the mmi but it keeps intermittently coming back. I plan on swapping out the right one now, but just seeing if anyone else had this issue and it’s just parts coincidently failing a few months apart, or I have bigger issues. FWIW, when I removed the left it had quite a bit of condensation in the housing. Scan of VCDS just shows an intermittent fault for the turn signal and nothing more.

[D3mon666]

I just has this exact issue. Here in the UK we've had around 4 storms in a row with heavy rain, which seems to have found its way into the boot/trunk lid. I noticed this when I opened the boot and water dripped from where the hinge mounts. Also, there was quite a bit of condensation inside the light clusters.

A couple of weeks ago, while driving, I started to get all sorts of light-related faults on the rear, so looked into it and found the boot/trunk lid had collected a level of water. I removed 4 rubber plugs on the underside of the boot/trunk lid which released the water and stuffed silicon gel sachets into the access panel on each side where you can replace the lamps.

After a few days, the condensation dried out in the clusters and the error codes disappeared. My research suggested that it was better to do this sooner than later as the water can corrode the cluster electrics if left wet for too long.

Hope this helps.

[christianb5s4]

This was a common issue on the LED lights on the C6/C6.5 cars, where corrosion on the LED boards inside the tail light occur over time and either stop individual LEDs stop working and/or you get an error even if the lights all work. Unfortunately on those it's impossible to service so a new light was the only remedy but might as well try the cheap and easy option first prior to going the replacement route.

[DGr1FF]

Bringing back an old thread to see if anyone has recommendations for this common issue? Faulty tail light warning for condensation after heavy rain on the INNER tail lights due to degrading butyl tape seal? Has anyone taken the lights aparts and scraped old seal, and replaced, and had success? Thank you.

[sepheroth86]

I had attempted to replace the seal on one of mine initially.

It did seem to help with moisture intrusion, but the damage to the light had already been done so I ended up replacing with a new Valeo (original manufacturer) light.

Approximately 1 year later and the other side did the same. So I skipped the seal and went right to a new light.