Volkswagen Golf 8 Glove Box LED

Amongst other things I own a Golf 8, the mild hybrid version. It impressed me some years back, and bought one second hand. RANT SPOILER: I will later post about the VAG vendor lock-in, which to an open source enthusiast like me, just totally sucks, at any level. But this will do for another post.

Since I bought the car I noticed the glove box LED never worked. At first I thought it would have just worked without external sun light, that is, when the AUTO switch (glorified twilight sensor) would turn on headlights, and internal lights. After some time, I figured it simply didn’t work, at all.

While leaving the car to servicing I’ve said word to the repairshop to have a look, in two occasions. Once, he told me “somebody tweaked the mechanism in the wrong way, and the switch was gone”. The other time, he “fixed it for good, and would have let me give a try”. It ended up working just the first time I’ve opened the box, then dead for good.

It didn’t bother me much, up until recently.

Is it the connector?

I don’t really know who dealt with the whole thing in the past, but it turned out the connector was totall gooed. Seems somebody “glued” it into the switch mechanism. Oddly enough, the pins from supposedly a previous switch were stuck into the connector.

Looking at the size, the connector was pretty standard to me. It was nothing much different than a PC CD Audio connector, with 3 holes and 2 pins, instead of 4 holes, and 3 pins. Back in the days CD readers for PCs would provide analog output for CDDA (Audio CDs/Tracks). One end would connect to the CD, the other to the audio card (Sound Blaster anyone?).

I got some of these in my closet, as I’ve had so many CD drives over the years.

Also useful for EMG Pickups

I’ve used these in the past to fix incomplete EMG Pickups kits in pickups. Mid 2000s it was an easy miss when buying second hand pickup sets, and by cutting one tab, these cables were perfect fit. See below images. Ah, the memories.

Back to the automotive now

Anyway, the original connector was done. Here are some comparison pictures of the former, and the new one.

Nothing much else to be added. Cut the old one, soldered in the new one, with heat shrink tubing to isolate. Note: the wires are only connected to a momentary SPST , so it would be safe to assume no voltage/current is present. I didn’t test the wires, so I honestly don’t know. Plus, better be safe than sorry.

That’s all folks? Not quite likely

Seemed as also the LED was faulty! No idea how this could have happened though. The connector on the LED support was pretty much evidently been reflowed, so possibly someone shorted it, and the fuse didn’t intervene in time, killing the LED? I don’t know.

The led is a SMD ultra bright one, so I savaged one (many, unsoldering these is not easy) from a partially broken LED strip. One of these:

And it now works! 1 hour of work solved some 100€ + genuine spare parts swap, not to count the retailer’s time.