Most of VW cars in Singapore come with euroswitch, which controls lighting systems, such as headlight, taillight , foglight to rear foglight.

If you are observant enough, you realised that the euroswitch has LED indicators to indicate the operation status of the all the lights, except the rear fog lights. Any layman will have this pass, thinking that it's designed to be that way. But if you bother to dig on this matter further, you realise that all it takes is a new LED bulb that cost no more than $1 SGD, to enable the rear foglight indicator feature.

So why doesn't VW AG include this item when they ship to their customer? Tax savings? Well, I guess only the product marketing director of VW AG knows it best!

But thanks to the knowledgebase from VwVortex, there exists a simple option to upgrade your euroswitch to have this missing feature, literally at minimal cost! Here's the how-to instructions, for your reference.

1. Before the mod, see the fog light icon (at the bottom left), and compare it to the finished result, if you don't understand what this mod is about…

2. This is what you need. The ampere of the LED should be no more than 6mA. Otherwise, you need to put in some resistors to bring down the amps.

3. Take out the euroswitch from the dashboard. To do so, just turn the switch knob until the knob is vertically straight (just after the 2nd stage), and pull out with a small jerk. You will find the switch is now loose, and you can now pull it out.

4. When you have taken out the switch, do observe the switch from all angles. You will find some tabs as shown in the picture above, highlighted in red circle. There are tabs on both side of the switch. Dismantle the switch by prying the tabs on both sides.

5. Once you have dismantled the top and bottom half of the euroswitch, you can further slowly dismantle the circuit board and springs as shown above. Observe and analyse the circuit board as shown in the 2nd and 3rd diagram
above.

6. You notice that there are LED bulbs already on the circuit board. These LED bulbs are litted up when the switch turn on appropiate lighting devices. You will need to analyse the spot where you add new LED bulb. The pictures above show the location of the new bulb, from the front and back of circuit board perspective.

7. Setup the wiring linkages as shown in the first diagram above. Proceed to solder the points, and you have the bulb setup correctly.

Picture of the circuit board with the new LED bulb setup successfully

Operation of 'Enhanced' Euroswitch in stages

a. Finished result: Before turning on the rear fog
b. Stage 1: When the euroswitch is turned on ..
c. Stage 2: When the euroswitch is turned to switch on headlight
d. Final Stage: When the euroswitch is turned to switch on rear fog light