DAP vs ECS vs BEC OEM LED Tail Harness

Purchasing a new mk7 gti shortly and I am trying to plan how to purchase OEM LED R Tails cost effectively.
I noticed DAP, BEC, and ECS all offer harnesses, with the former two also selling dynamic turn signal adapters.

Adapters:
-ECS
-DAP
-BEC

Dynamic turn signal adapters:
-DAP
-BEC

My question is, what differentiates these products from one another and can I use them interchangeably??

I notice the DAP harness uses the inner/outer for the brake light, BEC only uses the outer for brake, anyone have an idea what ECS uses??

Can I use ECS adapters, with BEC dynamic turn signal indicators? (cheapest option, considering ECS is the only one that includes rear fog wire)

Also, does anyone know how each of these adapters handle the clear amber indicator in the outer tail light when indicating? I've seen some where the LEDs turn off, and others where it alternates red and amber. (See this thread)

Even edward from BEC says DAP coding, won't work with his harness.

Looking at the install guide above, BEC has a wire going from inner right to inner left, for what?? Does his have fog light wire built in??

Any help appreciated! Thanks

I'm using BEC's harness since it imitates ROW functionality (lights outer-only when braking, rear fog). Video

I used this as a reference when the BEC guide got confusing - dmc's guide. If you buy BEC's harness you can directly go to the Stage 2 coding w/ rear fog. Note that you'll probably need to get LED reverse lights, as stock incandescent might cause problems.

Looking at the install guide above, BEC has a wire going from inner right to inner left, for what?? Does his have fog light wire built in??

Click to expand...

For the rear fog, all I needed to do was enable it via coding. And yes, it needed to be wired from both side's inner tail lights. Goes from Right inner to Left inner if I remember correctly?

Also, does anyone know how each of these adapters handle the clear amber indicator in the outer tail light when indicating? I've seen some where the LEDs turn off, and others where it alternates red and amber. (See this thread)

Click to expand...

Mine works exactly like the video above, so LED's in that clear amber indicator area doesn't turn off.

Dynamic turn signal adapters

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There might be a difference between DAP's and BEC's. Looking at DAP's, there seems to be that middle connector that controls the speed. DAP looks identical to this and they seem to have a way to control the speed of the indicators with this. BEC's doesn't have this "speed control" (or at least I didn't see one when I installed mine)

I'd like to think that they will work with either harnesses. I assume that they should be able to work with ROW MK7s that has factory LED wirings, as that euro site sells them.

Can't go wrong with either of the adapters. As for me, I chose BEC's simply because of the cost.

Here's a gif of mine: X

Derushi said:

I'm using BEC's harness since it imitates ROW functionality (lights outer-only when braking, rear fog). Video

I used this as a reference when the BEC guide got confusing - dmc's guide. If you buy BEC's harness you can directly go to the Stage 2 coding w/ rear fog. Note that you'll probably need to get LED reverse lights, as stock incandescent might cause problems.


For the rear fog, all I needed to do was enable it via coding. And yes, it needed to be wired from both side's inner tail lights. Goes from Right inner to Left inner if I remember correctly?



Mine works exactly like the video above, so LED's in that clear amber indicator area doesn't turn off.


There might be a difference between DAP's and BEC's. Looking at DAP's, there seems to be that middle connector that controls the speed. DAP looks identical to this and they seem to have a way to control the speed of the indicators with this. BEC's doesn't have this "speed control" (or at least I didn't see one when I installed mine)

I'd like to think that they will work with either harnesses. I assume that they should be able to work with ROW MK7s that has factory LED wirings, as that euro site sells them.

Can't go wrong with either of the adapters. As for me, I chose BEC's simply because of the cost.

Here's a gif of mine: X

Click to expand...

This post has been incredibly helpful. Upon closer examination, it appears ECS harness is essentially, identical to DAP, except it includes a rear fog wire. AKA means DAP is ripping everyone off ($160 w rear fog vs $100 from ECS).

I see now how different BEC is, it appears the wire from inner right to left linking the reverse lights is a hack to put them on the same channel. The VWVortex thread you linked has been insightful.

Edward from BEC responded to your post in this thread saying that the BEC dynamic indicator does indeed have a speed switch, like DAP. From the looks of your video, it appears your indicators aren't working at the same speed as the DAP ones in this video?
Thank you again!

I completely missed that post! I'll need to re-check mine, not sure how I missed that speed switch.

Another thing that I forgot to mention, I believe the 4 brake light (inner/outer) can be achieved with BEC's harness via coding, as per the posts on VWVortex. The DAP harness cannot do the outer-only brake light however.

As for coding, I used OBDEleven for mine. It's quite simple, you just go to 09 Central Electronics and to Adaptations. There's a search box that you should be able to use to search for the adaptations you want to change, then change the values to match the coding spreadsheet.

bluedoggiant said:

This post has been incredibly helpful. Upon closer examination, it appears ECS harness is essentially, identical to DAP, except it includes a rear fog wire. AKA means DAP is ripping everyone off ($160 w rear fog vs $100 from ECS).



I see now how different BEC is, it appears the wire from inner right to left linking the reverse lights is a hack to put them on the same channel. The VWVortex thread you linked has been insightful.



Edward from BEC responded to your post in this thread saying that the BEC dynamic indicator does indeed have a speed switch, like DAP. From the looks of your video, it appears your indicators aren't working at the same speed as the DAP ones in this video?

Thank you again!

Click to expand...

I wouldn't say that DAP is ripping off anyone.
Is it more expensive? Sure but DAP is a small 2 man business that developed the first harness for this lights and have hundreds of videos that tons of people use regardless of buying from them or not. I tend to support business like Paul's and ED when I can because they need that support to survive, ECS is a huge company and while I buy from them you can never compare the two.



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BxGTI said:

I wouldn't say that DAP is ripping off anyone.
Is it more expensive? Sure but DAP is a small 2 man business that developed the first harness for this lights and have hundreds of videos that tons of people use regardless of buying from them or not. I tend to support business like Paul's and ED when I can because they need that support to survive, ECS is a huge company and while I buy from them you can never compare the two.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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100% with you there.
I was simply comparing the apples to apples harness that appear to be identical from both vendors.

In other words, less fair to compare DAP to BEC because that harness is different altogether, but even BEC's is under $100, and it appears to be a one man job as well.

Glad I got to the bottom of the differences between the three...hope others will find this info useful.

bluedoggiant said:

100% with you there.

I was simply comparing the apples to apples harness that appear to be identical from both vendors.



In other words, less fair to compare DAP to BEC because that harness is different altogether, but even BEC's is under $100, and it appears to be a one man job as well.



Glad I got to the bottom of the differences between the three...hope others will find this info useful.

Click to expand...

Fair enough [emoji4]. It is a very useful post clarifying a great concern. It will help the community for sure


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Still unsure of which company to buy

davidk1175 said:

Still unsure of which company to buy

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I recommend BEC. For price and functionality. I have not received my set yet, but from my research they seem to offer the most bang for buck, but will require a wire between both inner tails, a little extra coding, and likely LED reverse bulbs.

Kk I will look and see what they have available. Thanks

Anyone know the coding to activat the 4 brake lights on the LED tails? I have BEC led tails and their harneas. The code I found online are meant for OEM. I am not sure if the channels are the same.

Dap. Pros:less coding + 4 brake lights cons:expensive
Bec. Pros:cheap cons:long coding, 4 brake lights are possible but outer brake lights up slightly faster than inner brake lights.
I ended up getting bec tail light and dap harness

bluedoggiant said:

I recommend BEC. For price and functionality. I have not received my set yet, but from my research they seem to offer the most bang for buck, but will require a wire between both inner tails, a little extra coding, and likely LED reverse bulbs.

Click to expand...

This!

I also have the BEC harness and OEM led tail lights. They have the best deal and also include led reverse lights.

Also, coding isn't that bad. Just takes a little while to go through and search for the adaptations. VCDS makes searching for them easy.

ATR said:

This!

I also have the BEC harness and OEM led tail lights. They have the best deal and also include led reverse lights.

Also, coding isn't that bad. Just takes a little while to go through and search for the adaptations. VCDS makes searching for them easy.

Click to expand...

Yeah coding is just a one time thing, don't mind spending a few more minutes. I decided to go with deAutoKey reverse LEDs.

MacaN said:

Dap. Pros:less coding + 4 brake lights cons:expensive
Bec. Pros:cheap cons:long coding, 4 brake lights are possible but outer brake lights up slightly faster than inner brake lights.
I ended up getting bec tail light and dap harness

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Didn't know if you did choose to use all 4 lights that the inner would delay.

Colourwolf said:

Anyone know the coding to activat the 4 brake lights on the LED tails? I have BEC led tails and their harneas. The code I found online are meant for OEM. I am not sure if the channels are the same.

Click to expand...

I would search through this thread: http://forums.vwvortex.com/showthre...P-Harness-for-Independent-Inner-Light-Control