Interior Door Handle Illumination

(undergoing editing - more to come, with photos)

Here's how to get illuminated interior door handles on your Mk3. This gives a pleasing even glow to allow passengers unfamiliar with your vehicle to find the handles in the dark - useful if you're dropping them off without turning the engine off.

You can fit this in any door that has electric windows, as it uses the ignition-live feed that illuminates the switches. If you have a facelift LX with manual rear windows, you're on your own. Note that the rear electric window disable switch on the driver's door also disables the illumination on the rear switches, so your handle lights will go out too.

Parts needed per door

• 5mm LED in chosen colour. Choose a fairly bright version.
• Suitable resistor. I used 3x270ohm in series for a red LED. See Calculating LED Resistor Values.
• Wire, either twin or two separate lengths. You'll need about 40cm per door, and you'll need to be able to distinguish the two wires.
• Various bits of heatshrink if you want to do it properly, insulting tape if you can't be bothered.
• Tape for fixing your new wiring to the door.
• Some form of milky white plastic sheet. I used a 4 pint Asda milk bottle, well washed.
• Decent glue. I used SuperGlue (cyanoacrylate).

Tools needed

• Soldering iron and solder. Seriously, don't mess around with twisting and taping.
• Tools for cutting / stripping wire. I prefer to strip insulation by melting the "cut point" with the soldering iron and pulling, as that avoids damage to the already-thin conductors.
• Cross-head (Philips) screwdriver
• T25 Torx driver for the door handle recess screw. You might get lucky with the right-sized flat blade screwdriver, but don't come crying if you strip it.
• 5mm drill bit.

Build LED loom

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Remove door card

See Removal Of Door Cards - Mk3.

Drill hole

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Install wiring

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Fit LED

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Cut window in handle cup

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Reassemble

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