When I first saw this mod in vwvortex, I was very excited, because it look so elegant and OEM. My first reaction was, “Hey, how can VW ever missed this equipment in their factory assembly line, they should compensate their customers with a recall!”
Of course, the reaction was made in a jest, but very soon, the plan of action is very clear; to get this modification realised by hook or by crook. The thought of installing this W8 dome light myself is also quite taunting. You see, everything that I touched, will either break or become dysfunctional.
But the DIY spirit prevails, and the result was one of the most satisfaction, from all mods I have performed so far.
First thing first, parts required
| W8 domelight (gray interior) |
3B7 947 105 F2EN |
1 ea |
| repair wire (for 6 pin plug) |
000 979 131 |
2 ea |
| 6 pin plug (male) |
3B0 972 706 |
1 ea |
| 3 pin plug housing (female) |
893 971 993 |
1 ea |
| repair wire (for 3 pin plug) |
000 979 103 |
2 ea |
| led wedge-type H12V6 bulb |
(non-vw parts) |
4 ea |
More about the parts
Our stock wire harness is made to connect to a domelight that uses 3-pin plug, and to install W8 domelight, we need to modify so that the stock harness is re-wired to connect to the W8 dome light that uses 6-pin plug.
The parts required are shown in the diagram above (with the exception of led bulbs, not shown). Of the 6 items listed, two of them are optionals. The 3 pin plug housing (893971993) and the female repair wire (893971993, as indicated by the red arrow in the diagram on the left) are required only if you intend to build an adapter (between stock harness and 6 pin plug housing in the W8 domelight), instead of splicing and cutting the existing harness.
Detailed steps
1. Remove the plastic cover from the stock panel, and you unscrew the screws shown in the photo, pointed by the red arrows.
2. Pry open the stock panel. I did the wrong way and end up more effort required to take out. You should be prying first at the 2 points pointed by the red arrows.
3. When the stock panel is taken out, remove the overhead light visor too so that you can run a wire through that area.
4. Once you managed to run the wire through the edge of the windscreen, push the wire down the a-pillar.
5. Run the wire (for dimmer) into the roof fabric linen and through the edge of the roof to the a-pillar.
6. Open the side cover where the fuse box is. You need to access to the bottom of the A-pillar in order to complete the running of the dimmer wire.
As a safety precautious, you may want to take out fuse #14 at the same time, so that any wrong wiring you made in the next few steps (touch wood!) does not blow off your fuse, and you are modifying on a open circuit environment.
7. From the bottom of A-pillar, get hold of the dimmer wire, and pull down long enough so that you can tap on the eur switch later on
8. Remove the euroswitch and unplug the switch. If you are not familiar on how to remove the euroswitch, simply push in the knob and turn the knob to the center position, and pull out the euroswitch.
You will get to see a set of wires, and basically the blue-gray wire that the dimmer wire needs to tap on is pointed by the red arrow points in the diagram. It should be the wire in the position #17.
9. To make sure I got the right wire tapped, I just do a temporary tapping and move on to working on the rest of the wirings & connections.
10. Since I have 2 of the repair wires (000 979 103, bronze tip), I cut them into half, and plug the 3 wires into the housing as shown.
This step is optional and can be skipped if you are not building an adapter.
11. Next I work on the new 6-pin plug. The terminals of the repair wire (000 979 131) should be fitted into position 1, 3, 4 and 5. You will see a small number writing on the plug as pointed by the various colored arrows. (red:1, blue:3, green:4, yellow: 5).
12. We are ready to create the adapter now.
Once all the repair wires are fitted into the 6-pin plug and 3-pin housing, connect the wires up! The wire #1 should leave as it is as we will be connecting it to the dimmer wire later on.
- Wire #4 connects to the stock brown wire (or the wire #1 in the housing).
- Wire #5 goes to stock blue-red wire (or wire #2 in the housing).
- Wire #3 goes to blue-gray (or wire #3 in the housing).
- Wire #1 will be linked to the dimmer wire later
Note that if you are not creating an adapter, and have skipped step 10, you need to tap the wires (000 979 131) directly onto the stock harness wires.
13. Plug the stock harness into the 3 pin-plug housing. Tap wire #1 to the dimmer wire as shown
14. Test the connection, you should have all switches and buttons working accordingly. The led should also lit up when you turn your euroswitch. If everything is okay, tidy up the wirings, use wire connector if possible, and fit the panel back to the roof linen.
15. Put the W8 domelight back to the roof linen. The domelight is mounted and held on the roof via 2 metal clips behind. Here's a view of the domelight when euro switch is turned on at stage 1 position.
16. All the lights are in action by turning the euro switch to full position. You should also test if the light turns on/off when you open and close the doors.
finally, if you have the wedge-type led bulbs, you will achieve the following effect
Other references
1. VWvortex's SoFlaJetta W8 DIY guide
2. Hillside Imports' [Official W8 Overhead console install
3. Cars & Cars Part department (Singapore VW dealer)
4. Alternate part supplier: Hillside Imports
5. Alternate part supplier: Tmtuning.com
6. Additional information from Vwvortex
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