Interior Door Handle Illumination

(undergoing editing - more to come, with photos)

Imagine the situation - you're courting an attractive young lady, the evening's gone well, and you're dropping her off at home in a dark street. You share a light kiss, she opens the door and she's gone for the night. Later, things develop well, and you marry and raise a family. One of your children goes on to be the chief scientist on the SpaceGuard programme that successfully saves the earth from destruction by an oncoming asteroid. Good news indeed.

But let's rewind to that first evening. Assume that your lady friend cannot find the door handle in the dark. She giggles nervously as she tries to find the handle, feeling awkward and uncomfortable. In an attempt to put her at her ease, you laugh too - but she interprets this as mockery! Things go downhill from here, and you split up; she instead falls for a man with a top-spec Mk2, which already has illuminated handles. Later, the earth is destroyed by an oncoming asteroid.

I think it's clear why this is a critical modification.

Here's how to get illuminated interior door handles on your Mk3. 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.
• Some method of cutting a roughly rectangular hole in plastic. I bodged it with multiple 3mm hoels with a drill plus some filing. Neatness is not critical, as the hole won't be seen.

Build LED loom

Before you start taking the car apart, construct the LED loom. Put the series resistor(s) in line with the positive wire. The LED will probably have a flat bit at the base of its plastic case: this shows which leg is the cathode (negative). At the far end of the wire, build a "Y" piece into the end to allow you to connect your new wiring into the cut door wiring.

As above, use plenty of heatshrink. Insulation is very important.

Remove door card

See Removal Of Door Cards - Mk3.

Drill hole

In the plastic door handle surround attached to the door (not the bit on the door card) drill a 5mm hole on the "slope", ideally about 1/3 of the way from the inside edge to the outside edge.

Install wiring

First, identify the switch illumination wires using, for example, the Haynes wiring diagrams. Look out for the German colour abbreviations. In my pre-facelift Graphite, these are:

• Driver's door: Green/Yellow is positive, Black is ground. There are a lot of "black with a stripe" wires, but only one pure black wire.
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Unwrap some of the fabric cable wrap about 6" away from the switch. Separate the wires you need from the bunch, cut and strip them. Tin the ends with solder, then, when cool, fit a bit of unshrunk heatshrink ready to cover the joint when you've made it. Make sure it's waiting far enough away from the end that it doesn't get shrunk when you join the ends!

Tin the ends of your LED loom, and solder in the wiring. Slide the heatshrink over the join, and shrink using heat from the iron. Be sure to not melt any insulation or burn a hole in the door membrane!

Fit LED

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Cut window in handle cup

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Reassemble

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