Lockdown DIY updates to a Volkswagen Polo GT TSI

Forum members who are familiar with my car know my passion for DIYs. It has been over two years now, and my confidence to take up and execute DIYs has grown, as has my tool collection.

BHPian TheLizardKing recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

Forum members who are familiar with my car know my passion for DIYs. It has been over two years now, and my confidence to take up and execute DIYs has grown, as has my tool collection.

Amid the ongoing lockdown, I decided to clear my DIY pipeline and complete some projects that have been pending for a long time. I have started this thread to describe these projects:

• Boot illumination (already covered here in my ownership thread)
• Lock/unlock switch on passenger side
• Courtesy lights on door panels
• Puddle lamps under ORVMs

Lock/unlock switch on passenger side

Whenever my wife and I are out at night and I need to step out of the car for some reason (e.g. withdraw money from the ATM), I always insist for safety reasons that my wife lock the car. It is neither easy nor convenient for her to unbuckle the seat belt and lean over to the driver's side to do so, and she has to do it twice.

The British forum UK POLOS has been a source of many DIY ideas for me, and that is where I found the solution to my problem. I used this post on user ciclo's thread as a reference for this DIY. It has all the required information, so I am not reproducing the same here.

Parts required

• Connector 1K0972704G x1 (purchased on Boodmo)
• Terminals 000 979 009 E x4 (purchased on AliExpress)
• Door handle cover 6R0867171K82V x1 (not purchased, read below)
• Door handle 6R0867179JTLL x1 (purchased used on eBay)
• Lock/unlock switch 6R1962125AREH x1 (purchased used on eBay)

Materials required:

0.5 mm2 wire, since the terminals (item no. 2 above) are very small and do not accept 1 mm2 wire.

I planned to reuse the stock door handle cover and hence did not purchase item no. 3, only to realize at the last moment that the locking tabs on the stock door handle cover do not match those on item no. 4.

I recovered from this setback by resorting to jugaad and plugging the hole in the door handle cover that had come with item no. 4.

Courtesy lights on door panels

I am a big fan of lights, because I find that they really up the premium quotient of the car. A common feature in high-end cars is the courtesy lights in the door panels. In the VW family, this feature is available in the Jetta and higher segment cars. So sometime in 2019, when I saw this post by user Benzinkopf on the UK POLOS forum, I immediately knew that I wanted these in my car too.

I reached out to Benzinkopf, and he was more than happy to help. His real name is Amir, and he is from Malaysia. We have kept in touch ever since, and I find it very helpful to bounce ideas off him. He is a 3D printing expert, and keeps designing and printing small parts for his DIYs.

The way Amir has done it, it requires a hole to be cut in the door panel. A 3D printed bracket specially designed to hold the courtesy light unit (part number 3GD 947 411, purchased on AliExpress) is then fitted into the hole. I took the electrical connections from inside the door panel itself.

Puddle lamps under ORVMs

This DIY was again inspired by Gannu_1. Here is the post on his ownership thread.

I sourced the LEDs from the same vendor as Gannu, but I purchased the Premium Stainless Steel (3W) version in warm white. I have powered them using the supply for the footwell lights.

Check out BHPian comments for more insights and information.