Got around to doing the dual reverse light mod. Ever since i saw it on Lucas_R's build thread here when he had a Golf R, it's something I've always wanted to do.
I decided to DIY this but I had never done any soldering before and I'm pretty crap when it comes to wires and electrics. Big, big thanks to
Lucas (Lucas_R) and
Jeff (In Black) for answering all of my newbie queries and providing help and assistance as well as photos as a guide on how I should tackle this.
In hindsight, it's not a very difficult DIY mod and a seasoned expert/professional could probably do it in about 30 minutes. I decided to take as much time as I needed, making sure I dont miss anything.
I tried to take some photos as I went along but my phone battery died on me so couldnt get many pics, but here we go.
You will need:
- Driver side inner tail light with reverse bulb (you can buy the inner from BKS-tuning)
- Soldering iron with solder (I got mine from Jaycar)
- Wire stripper and a small blade/craft knife (Wire stripper available from Jaycar and blade/craft knife available from Bunnings)
- Two-core power cable about 2 metres (I also got this from Jaycar. 7.5A rated)
- Replacement reverse bulbs (They are a W16W bulb and you can either get LED's from Bold-Sport or if you want to keep it Halogen but still have white light, I opted for B1 Hybrid, made in Japan)
1) The very first thing I did was watch this video as I was a complete newbie to all this and had no clue what to do. This was great.
2) Remove the driver side inner by popping out the plastic cover from the boot and un-screw the two nuts holding the housing onto the bootlid. Also, remove the bootlid trim. This will require some force to do as you will pull on it and it will feel as though it will break or snap but gently keep applying more and more force until it pops out. Doing this will allow you to hide the wire underneat and zip-tie it all together to give it a neat finish later on.
3) There is a plastic latch on the sides holding the tail light housing on to the bootlid. To get this off, simply pull down with some gentle force. It should just pop out. Be careful not to break any tabs.
4) Once you remove the housing, the back of the tail light should look like this. We will be splicing into the yellow cable and the thicker of the two brown cables :
5) Take the ends of your 2 core power cable, get your wire stripper and get rid of the coating to expose the wires underneath.
6) With your craft knife/blade, carefully pierce the plastic cover to expose the wires underneath. Be careful not to damage too many of the wires underneath. Do this for both yellow and thick brown cable, and for both inner tail lights.
7) When you're done, it should look something like this :
Get the exposed wires from your cable and wrap it around the exposed wires from the tail lights and get it ready for soldering. For my application, the red cable went to the yellow tail light cable and the white cable went to the thicker brown cable. Solder away. Repeat for the other side
9) Mount the inner tail lamps back onto your boot lid. (my soldering job probably looks super crap! hahaha!). Make sure you cover the newly soldered connections with some electrical or insulation tape.
10) When it's all mounted, it should look like this. As you can see, I had a lot of excess cable left but thats alright as I neatly arranged it against the existing wires and zip-tied it all together so it doesn't rattle inside when I put the bootlid trim back on. At this point I also swapped out the OEM bulbs for the white halogen bulbs from B1 Hybrid.
That's it! Now, you have dual reverse lights and no more people saying to you that you have a light out when reversing! (excuse the crap picture quality)
Only thing is, if you were to pull the headlight switch to activate the rear fogs, both rear reverse lights will come on but only for a short period of time. It will turn off after about 5 seconds and you will get a "bulb out" error on the dash. For me, this is not a big thing because I have NEVER used the rear fog light ever. Even if you do pull the switch out and get that bulb out error on the dash, it goes away when you turn the car off and start it back up again.
Again, massive thanks to
Lucas_R and
In Black for helping me with all my queries.
