adding led's to cargo area

[capitan828]

So I added a pair of oem style licence plate led housings to the rear hatch to perfectly illuminate the cargo area. I had to cut couple of rectangular holes in the the plastic cover for the rear hatch. The results look great. Looks oem and you can't even tell it didn't leave the factory that way. You have to route the two power and ground wires from the original trunk light that we all know isn't worth a shit.
Let me work on putting some pictures up

 

[capitan828]

Here are a couple of pics

 

[Sandman GTI]

LED hatch light and LED strip lights can help with hatch area.
That said, nice mod you did. VW should have done this. Will be cool for Friday night car shows on the strip. Do them in red and even better.
How about posting some info on how you did it and parts needed in case others want to try.

Only negative. I will not have a place for my EU safety triangle.
Safety first!

 

[deAutoLED.com]

This mod is very interesting, we are not sure how many would want to do this or we can offer these as we sell the same ones as license plates.

LED hatch light and LED strip lights can help with hatch area.
That said, nice mod you did. VW should have done this. Will be cool for Friday night car shows on the strip. Do them in red and even better.
How about posting some info on how you did it and parts needed in case others want to try.

Only negative. I will not have a place for my EU safety triangle.
Safety first!

The trunk strip is a bit more plug and play with no cutting and will most likely produce more light due to the location - people like to install it on the side it lights up the entire trunk nicely:

The ring pops off, held by clips.

Installed some hatch LED lighting. I picked up a deautokey hatch strip but could not mount it in the suggested location because the hatch liner is in the way.

So I mounted the strip on the underside of the hatch cover lid, just under the lip.

I added a quick disconnect so if I am removing the hatch cover, I can unclip it easily.

Of course, that means if I am leaving the hatch cover off for more storage space, I lose that light. So I got spliced in another 2 strips off the main wiring and mounted a strip on either side as well.

The triple strip setup gives very even light coverage in the entire hatch.
Pitch black garage...only hatch lighting shown

 

[Sandman GTI]

Looks like a tanning bed.

 

[capitan828]

The led strips aren't a bad idea, but I think they look a little cheesie. My way looks damn near oem.

 

[deAutoLED.com]

Looks like a tanning bed.

Haha. Yeah, bright.

The led strips aren't a bad idea, but I think they look a little cheesie. My way looks damn near oem.

You cannot see the led strip lights when installed.

For what you are doing, we like it, post more info, we can offer it, but we are not sure many will want to cut anything on their car or lose space where they store other items but we want to try.

 

[kharma]

Very cool idea, although simply swapping out the OEM housing with LED from deAutoLED gave me plenty of light back there:

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[capitan828]

Very cool idea, although simply swapping out the OEM housing with LED from deAutoLED gave me plenty of light back there:

Sent from my D5803 using Tapatalk

Your trunk area looks a lot different than mine. If mine had a light on top like yours does I probably wouldn't have done what I did. Mines is the kind that has it off to the side were it doesn't really do anything. If I put anything tall on the right side of the trunk it pretty much blocks any light coming from it

 

[capitan828]

Ok I see now that your golf is a sport wagon. That explains it

 

[kharma]

Ahhh. I just assumed the lighting would be similar.

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[deAutoLED.com]

Ok I see now that your golf is a sport wagon. That explains it

Ahhh. I just assumed the lighting would be similar.

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Yes, we have some very bright LED housings so that is why we were curious to see the DIY on this, if customers were interested we could put together a kit as having 2 of those LEDs would be insanely bright as kharma only has 1 and you can see it is very bright.

 

[capitan828]

Well you don't really need a DIY this is pretty straight forward. Just make a good connection at the two wires for the existing trunk light and run them to the hatch area the same way you would any other wires for example rear fog lights or led tail retrofits. Then just cut the rectangular holes into plastic trim. You just have to be carefull when cutting the holes, you have to cut them the right size. I just used a razor blade, the trim is pretty soft plastic. How ever it does have to be in the same location that I used because there is no space else where.