Phoenix Gold Phorum

VW337 wrote:

Phoenixcolt wrote: 1.How tough is it to take the door panels off and run wire in a mk3 VW Golf?

Don't worry about the door panels, unless you are planning on doing full door deadening. Just remove the grill and you can fish the wire through that 3 inch wire boot pretty easily, be careful though I have seen a few models where the door grill does not just pop off.

I was unable to fish the wire through the 3" wire boot in the car. It is totally used up for space with electric mirrors, windows, and doorlocks. Even though it appears there is space, I was able to unscrew the black part, but behind it is a plug, the black part actually plugs directly into it so I don't want to mess around with it.

What should I do : ( ? I am bummed and pissed because as always it is more work than I wanted to do. Should I try to drill a new hole through the car and then tap into the wire boot and then just run it to the inside of the door?

goddamn VW's....


you might have to break through the part with no pins.....


and using the factory wire would be wack...i dont know, hopfully someone else has a good idea for you

God damn them indeed but running all my RCAs and Speaker wire to the hatch was relatively easy, I did have to pull quite a bit apart but it was smooth...this is a pain tho.

And of course I refuse to use the factory wire, I was thinking about it a few min ago but it is just about as bad as figuring this other prob out...the tweets up in the dash have 4 wires coming off and one goes to the mid so even that would be hellish...I would have to hard wire the speakers...f that.

What if I drilled a little hole as shown below, it wouldn't be the cleanest but I could make a hole in the boot and run wire through my new hole and into my boot and I could wrap my speaker wire in loom...I would be extremely worried to punch out holes where the pins appear not to be because there are quite a few pins and I might mess something up...

i think there is a better way the making a new hole in the door

can the plastic part in the first picture be removed? then you could drill out the section with no wires and run the wire through it.

^^^Like Fowler said, find a portion of the harness that's not getting used and drill a hole through it. I always tape a small piece of wire hanger to the end of the wire I'm using to help "thread" it to where it needs to go.

I have the same situation in my GTI. I took that plug apart and carefully drilled out an area with unused holes..I think I just made 3 in-line holes one single slot, drilled the same holes on the other piece of the plug on the door, and fed 4 wires through. It wasnt as difficult as it looks...it just takes some careful drilling. Nothing too crazy....the first one took me about half an hour, and the second maybe half that. Go for it!

PS....I did have to strip the outer jacket back and just feed the 4 conductors through (I used some UL listed resedential 16/4).

Here is the only pic I have...kinda blurry....but you get the idea. The red/black/green/white twisted wires are the ones I pulled through.

Cool thanks guys. I guess I will do it...not too excited as I am very worried I will take out one of the plugs by accident that a pin is actually using , but I guess I should easily be able to just aim for the area that doesn't have wires and go all the way through.

And what did you mean you had to strip the outer jacket back, on what?

You got it right. Just be careful and drill slow! CHeck and double check before drilling...and as you are drilling....go straight.

The cable I used is jacketed. ALl 4 conductors are in a PVC jacket. I had to strip that outer jacket off in order to fit the 4 conductors through the plug.

I do the same, drill out the unused portions of the door plugs and run my wires through there. Hondas are also like this along with a few other vehicles that I have run wires into the doors occasionally on.

As an alternative, you could go to a VW Stealership and buy the connectors that are used in that plug and attach your new speaker wire to them inserting them into the plugs into existing open holes and have a factory style connection.

Drill the plug or get pins, do not cut a hole in your car to run the wire.

I agree, I don't know how VW is, but getting pins for a Ford is cake. If your dealer is willing to help you a little.

Yeah I drilled it out with a Dremel, surprisingly easy. It started to rain so I didn't get the passenger side done yet.

perfect. mission accomplished

Bfowler wrote:perfect. mission accomplished

QFT!