Alan

Many will remember the threads about using the alternative VW interior lights that fit perfectly in the 928 locations.. I've had these installed for well over a year but with the incandescent 10W bulbs that came with them.

Well I also have a set of 44mm festoon LED bulbs that I had installed in my old stock Hella lights. They were "superbright white" but only just bright enough for me.

The VW fittings take 36mm festoon bulbs so quite a bit smaller. I didn't want even fewer LED elements - the 44mm ones can go up to 9 or 10 individual LED's and the 36mm seemed to only come with max 6 LED's in typical modules.

This weekend I modified all my VW fittings (spring terminals) to take the bigger festoon LED bulbs. I just took them apart and the +ve terminal end of the bulb holder can be easily removed. I tried 2 ways of lengthening the bulb space:

1) Cutting the terminal in 2 and soldering it back together with an ~ 5/16" overlap

2) Double folding it over on itself for the same 5/16" reduction

Both methods worked very well - folding the terminal was quicker so I just did that on 2/3 of them.

Alan

928ntslow

Alan, do you have any pics or links to help the visual on this?

dr bob

Alan--

My mental image is a piece of perfboard with LED's stuffed through, dropping resistors on the back, terminals on the ends to snap into the bulb holder thingies. Is there more to it than this?

Alan

No No - std commercial LED bulbs - look like festoon bulbs - I'll post images when I get home (thurs) - but the only issue is you can get better brightness bulbs in the longer versions (44mm vs 36mm) and of course I already had 5 of them from my old lights that I wanted to use.

In the end this was so easy I'd recommend others just do the same mod to use the brighter bulbs - mine were about $8 each - but they are well made and bright - but only about as bright as the stock incandescents (= barely enough to me). They are much whiter but any less brightness would be too little for me.

Alan

928ntslow

Sounds like the proverbial "ship in a bottle" syndrome

Alan

I'll post some photo's - maybe then all will be clear...

Alan

Hilton

I recently replaced all the courtesy lights with LEDs after a recommendation from a couple of people on the Aussie 928 list for this particular vendor and product.

I went with 5 of these 42mm super-bright LEDs (2 units in each bulb), along with a single 36mm one for the glove box (no affiliation other than being a satisfied customer of this vendor):

http://tinyurl.com/27unde

Plain white light, and brighter than the original incandescents I replaced with the LEDs. Very happy with them. I also insulated the leads on the ceiling lights while I had them out.

I fitted them in the stock bulb holders with no problem - 42mm is marginally (1mm?) longer than the stock bulbs, so went in without problems. The only annoyance was that in 4/5 of the bulbs' cases, I put them in the wrong way around first time (LED's are directional).

VWaddict

Which VW interior lights fit the 928?

-Curious as to whether they'll also work in a 951/944?

Do you have a link to the original thread? -I'd like to see!

Keith

Alan

Here are some photos:

Shows the lights, dissassembled, the contact as stock & folded, the relative size of the bulbs - this one was the 10 LED version, contact reinstalled in the sub assembly and the rear hatch unit This one (only) needs to be modified further due to less clearance around the fixture.

The original thread was this one... starts half way down page 5 :

https://rennlist.com/forums/showthre...eferrerid=6055

Dave H.

you didn't change to the black lights?

SeanR

That's odd.

I'm running the VW passat lights, the 44mm festoons and didn't have to make any modifications.

ew928

They make UV LED bulbs. Wonder if those are like the party lights or just give you a light tan . . .

Alan

Dave - Initially I couldn't find any - I installed these and actually like the grey - I may swap again later - but they actually look good - the grey contrast is quite nice.

I could not have got the 44 mm in without bending the terminals a lot... you can see how much I moved them and its still snug....

Alan

VWaddict

Fantastic stuff, -thanks!

FWIW, it looks like those same lights are in my MkIV (A4) Golf (shares a LOT of stuff with the B5.5 and B6 Passat).

I'll try and transplant one to see if it works in place of a 951 lamp fixture.

Incidentally, the B5.5/B6 Passat and A4 Golf visor clips are excellent drop-in replacement parts for the 924/931/944/951 visor clips (which break with annoying frequency) so if you do find that the 928 clips fail, it might be worth looking into whether or not the VW clips fit that application also...

I did post a thread on the subject:
https://rennlist.com/forums/944-turbo-and-turbo-s-forum/290232-vw-visor-clip-upgrade-pics.html

edit: -Ah, I see that the visor clip looks a little different, but I'll DEFINATELY look into the VW light going into the 944!

Cheers!

Keith

Dave H.

if it helps, the black lights that me and H run are from an R32 Golf...