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Hi all B8 S4 guys

I've owned the car for a few weeks and tonight spotted that the rear left inner light cluster was badly steamed up. Popped open the panel and found that there's water beading up throughout the inside of the tailgate. Also noticed that when opening the tailgate water tends to drop into the boot, not sure if that's related.

Anyone else experienced this?

Might pop it into Audi one day this week for them to take a glance but I don't much fancy a big bill for a strip down and all new seals when it could be something simple like a crushed seal. All advice welcome.

There was a TSB [tecnical service bulletin ] for the rear light seals ,i had it done on mine when it went in for service.

Brilliant! Thanks.

The car has FASH but I don't think this has been done so I'll get it booked in.

Reading Audi were useless. As soon as they found out my car was out of warranty (by a matter of months) they weren't interested in looking for the TSB, they just wanted to book the car in for 2 hours of chargeable diagnostics to dry the boot out prior to a pressurised water test.


Anyway, if you want a job doing and all that, so I whipped the inner tail lights off that night and I believe to have found the cause of the issue. The seals around the inner tail light clusters are rubberised foam. On the left side tail light (pictured in my OP) the seal had been crushed and it'd been moved away from its seat. I cleaned it all up, heated up the glue on the seal and reset it in the right position before carefully refitting it on the tailgate. No sign of water ingress since then but its early days.

Unfortunately though I've now noticed that one of the LEDs is out on the right side inner light cluster. Gutted! This thread on Audizine both suggests that LED failure can be caused by the same water ingress issue I experienced, and also that the tail light seals are faulty and are being routinely replaced by Audi as suggested by blackphantom.

Going to try approaching another local Audi dealer armed with this information. Watch this space.

Phone AUDI UK customer services and they will open a case and sort it out for you,if as you say your car has FASH the seals should have been replaced when the car had been in for servicing and then that would of prevented the led to become faulty.

Had a free health check at Basingstoke Audi today and raised the issue again. They checked and my car's not due any recall work and they claim that they couldn't find any related TPI/TSBs either.

blackphantom, is yours an Avant by any chance?

jaygemson wrote:Had a free health check at Basingstoke Audi today and raised the issue again. They checked and my car's not due any recall work and they claim that they couldn't find any related TPI/TSBs either.

blackphantom, is yours an Avant by any chance?

No it was a late 2010 saloon, i say was as i traded last July for my current RS3.Check back through previous threads as I'm sure there will be something on all the tab's on the early B8's.

Cheers, will do