Hey Guys and Gals… (hmmm any female S6 owners in here?)
Anyways i’m in the NYC area and it gets dark early around 5pm or so and lately I’ve noticed that the head light output was inadequate.
Anyone successfully modded / upgraded the headlight output? Tried to use LEDs etc…?
what do your headlights look like right now? if the housings are cloudy, a headlight restoration kit will do wonders for improving the light coming out.
beyond that, i’m not sure what kits are available, but theretrofitsource.com is THE place for lights. very high quality stuff and worth every penny.
it’s clear, maybe a rock chip here or there but no cloudiness. I just want to see what others have done if anything before i start spending. i’ll also check out that website thanks.
X 2 on The Retrofit Source, I’ve been getting lighting parts from them for years for multiple different vehicles and they’ve always been great to deal with and great products.
I grabbed a new set of bulbs from them for my S6
Definitely made a noticeable improvement for light output and better colouring as well compared to the stock bulbs.
I think the headlights could also benefit from a set of their clear lenses…
I’m just not 100% if you can remove the projectors from behind to be able to swap the lenses or if you have to pull the lenses on the housings. I did this before on my truck when I retrofitted projectors into it and it’s not the worst job but it is a bit of a pain so haven’t decided if it’s worth the hassle or not if that’s what’s needed to swap lenses on the S6 headlights.
I also got a set of the Morimoto LED bulbs to put in the fog lights however after taking the headlights out and having a good look I really don’t think there will be room for them in there so need to rethink that.
I put in a new pair of Osram Xenarc Night breakers.
While they are fine, I didn’t find them to be an incredible improvement.
http://www.powerbulbs.com/product/osram-night-breaker-unlimited-d2s-single
I did both the bulbs and clear projector lenses above for the same issues (poor visibility).
It was a massive improvement! I wouldn’t be surprised if most of the improvement came from the bulbs alone.
The clear lenses seem to have helped, but don’t know if I would do them again. As mentioned, to replace the projector lenses if you have the adaptive headlights you have to cut open the entire headlight housings (used a soldering iron with a special bit) and then plastic weld them back together. It was a massive PITA.
I was getting an adaptive headlight error warning on my dash as the wires tend to cook the insulation off themselves and short out/break. Had my wires not also had issues (again, requires process above to fix) I would not have replaced the lenses.
It could just be your bulbs. I had one start to go out so they replaced both bulbs and it was night/day difference in output with just that alone
I just did this last week… got tired of one of my HID bulbs fading to dull purple, and generally decreased light output overall.
Pulled the bumper and both headlights, cleaned the backs of the projector lenses w/ a ‘tool’ I fashioned from a coat hanger and a rag soaked in Windex.
Buffed up the outer lenses and LED strips a bit w/ a good gritty polish.
Replaced both bulbs w/ 6k’ers, and the results are TREMENDOUS! Tangible improvement in light output and visibility. I still think the high’s penetration PALES in comparo to my wife’s GL’s… those lights are outf’nstanding. Alas, for the time effort and (lack of) $$$ spent, I’m giddy.
Good luck…
Thanks for the information looks like my HIDs need to be replaced and www.theretrofitsource.com is the place to go.
How do i access the back of the headlight to replace the bulb? Do I need to remove the bumper or just the wheel liner?
What are the chances anyone did a before and after. I think the clean lenses idea is a big part of the gain from what others have said. It would be nice to have a bulb that everyone has had a great experience with.
ITs hard to tell if the lenses or the bulbs in some cases are the helping factor.
I also went the Osram 6k route - noticeably better, but I’m pretty sure the output isn’t better - just the 6k color makes things stand out a little better.
I bought the clear lenses as well, but never got around to installing them, as others have found out, you have to cut open the housings to get at the projectors if you’ve got AFS (should be a no brainer/easy to do on non-AFS headlights). My outer lenses are really really cloudy - I hit it with cutting paste every now and then, but really I need to cut em open this summer and replace the lenses. The big improvement with the “clear lenses” is that they’re not Fresnel patterned. Whether the focus/beam is better or not remains to be seen, but there will be a lot less scattered light.
I’ll definately do a before/after when I get around to modding them. I’ll probably take the opportunity to phantom black the housings as well. Also plan on polishing the DRL lenses - they’re just as cloudy as the headlights I think. Look for it around April/May 
I’ve had that error ever since I bought my car, I wish I could find what the problem is, it’s really irritating. I don’t care if my headlights are “adaptive”, I just want the beep and the constant giant flashing yellow warning icon to go away.
My headlights seem to get pretty cloudy every year, I keep polishing them with various different kits, and they look nice for about 6 months but then start to fade again. They look worse than ever now, and the light output is quite dull. I’ve been tempted to just completely replace them at this point.
The last S6 I looked at had your same issue. I just pulled up the headlights in Vag com and recoded them to non adaptive and it solved all of the issues. Obviously you would want to fix the actual issue but in the mean time that is a quick fix that can help
guys i have 2008 audi s6, i got auto leveling but dont have afs. is there any option to get afs as well?
also i was looking to get both projectors in my headlights as they have one halogen and a projector xenon.
Hi,
I install AFS headlights, complete headlights with afs units on them, and aditional part required was central headlight unit that support afs which is inside of car somewhere in dash.
After all, coding
can you give a little more details about that afs unit?
From my knowledge, every S6 has AFS from factory, so you either have a failed AFS wiring and someone coded them out, or else, you might not have an actual S6 lights
Hi, sorry for late answer, now i have chance to toke picture.
This module was in car with standard headlights, just for range control. Which model is now for afs im not shure but it can be find online
And if wanna install high beam assistant then need this module, which i still didnt replaced…
This module should be able to do AFS operation according to ETKA. However it does say, it is for cars with pneumatic suspension, which wasn’t available on the S6. As I said previously, every S6 has AFS as standard, so you either have a faulty AFS, you have it coded out, or your headlights are not actual S6 headlights.
