Retrofitting 2014+ Door lighting on a 2011-13 S60

How I installed ground lights and door pocket lights on my front doors of my 2013 S60.

I haven't seen anyone do this mod on an earlier P3 before, most likely because it's such a small thing that nobody really cares about or becaues it's simple enough that no one bothers documenting it. Either way, I wanted to do it on my 2013 S60 and figured I'd document the process for anyone else wanting to do the same mod.

To start this post off I'll explain why I did this retrofit. If you've been following my Instagram, you'll already know that I've been working on rebuilding my Summum spec S60 to a 2014+ R-Design and a few weeks ago as of writing this post, I managed to find 4 perfect condition R-Design door panels from 2016. No scratches or damage of any kind at all!

And my plans were that as I install them to finish as much as possible in my doors so that I won't have to take them off and on again for future retrofits. Since these doors came with the hole for ground lights and with pre installed door pocket lights on both front doors, I didn't just wanna leave those as is..

Here are the doors in question: Image

So as I was planning on doing the retrofit, I did some research in VIDA and dug out the signal specifications and wiring diagrams as well as part numbers.

First of all, the ground lights and pocket lights up front require's new pins to be used on each door module (the PDM and DDM, pocket lights needing to be soldered), and if you enable the correct CarConfig option in P3Tool:

  • P#216 Interior Lighting: 0x07 = High Illumination Package With gear lever illumination nothing happens, thats because - as VIDA specifies - "Only certain vehicles" has those pins used, namely cars that are from 2014-18.

So, the first thing I did was to try and swap out my PDM to see what would happen. The first thing I noticed was when I did a fault trace on my car, it had given me a DTC from the passenger door that the ground light was disconnected... Perfect!!

I've learnt from my research thus far, that all the door modules for the S60 and V60 2011-2018 are hotswappable. They work across any of those P3 model years and don't have to be reprogrammed. Just note that the 2011-2013 ones have less functionality 😛

Anyways, now that thats figured out, I decided to order the DDM as well! Note that I can't really provide any specific part numbers for these since I haven't found a consistent one across all the scrapyard websites I use. Just make sure to get one from a 2014-2018 S60/V60 and it should work fine! If you want to be safe, go from somewhere in the middle, like a 2016.

As for the rear doors, you don't need any new pins, since according to VIDA and the EWD, there are none in the rear door modules for pocket lights on any model year. Instead they're routed into the cabin and wired to the rear seat heating button illumination pins, but since thats too much work.. I checked in VIDA and the seat heating buttons as well as the window lift button in the door light up under the same conditions and they also provide the same amount of voltage. So... I decided to go the lazy route and planned to just tap into the window button on each rear door 🤷‍♂️ (until I noticed far too late into the retrofit that my rear doors were missing the pocket lights, I'll still provide wiring diagrams for them though).

After finding all this out, the next step was gathering what part numbers I needed to buy to start wiring everything up and I found these Volvo part numbers:

  • 2x Ground light connector: VO 30656844
  • 4x Ground light terminal: VO 30656669
  • 4x PDM/DDM terminal: VO 30656645
  • 8x Pocket light terminal: VO 30656678 (8x if you're doing both front and rear doors, otherwise 4x for just front doors)
  • 4x Pocket light connector: VO 9187023 (4x if you're doing both front and rear doors, otherwise 2x for just front doors)

I quickly however, found out that it would end up being very expensive to buy these from Volvo, so I instead opted to finding the original manufacturer part numbers on digikey and buying them there for $30 (including shipping):

After that I needed two ground lights and since I already had the pocket lights, I didn't need to worry about that. However if you're looking on retrofitting them but dont have them, here are the part numbers for those too:

  • Right pocket light x2: 31403124 (2x if you're doing both front and rear doors, otherwise 1x for just front doors)
  • Left pocket light x2: 31403123 (2x if you're doing both front and rear doors, otherwise 1x for just front doors)
  • Ground light x2: 1286317

But since I didn't want to pay the Volvo premium, I opted to buy one of those logo R-Design lights from Aliexpress instead.

Wiring up the lights is an easy job which ever way you decide to go. Buying the digikey parts, you'll need a cable stripper and crimping tool. Buying Volvo repair terminals, you'll need to solder or use heat shrink solder sleeve's and some heat as well as cable strippers and some extra red and black wires 0.5 mm (I was forced to use 0.75 mm which just makes the job harder) for either option to add length.

Here are the tools I used when working on this retrofit:

I was unable to find the same crimp pliers on the Würth US web page, but thats at least something to reference when looking for other crimp pliers.

For the pocket lights each slot is numbered as shown, pay big attention to the orientation of the connector on the image:

Wiring

Image

1 is 12V, so preferably use a red cable here

3 is GND, so black.

It should look something like this (note, the orientation of the connector): Image Image

Up front, the connections are the same on each side:

  • Red/12V/Pin 1 of the pocket lights goes to C2:4 on the PDM/DDM
  • Black/GND/Pin 3 goes to C2:17.

These pins are also used for illumination of the window switches, so you can just tap into those wires.

C2 is this connector:

DDM/PDM C2

Image Image

and the ":x" is which pin number

For the rear doors, I again just tapped into the existing wires for the window switches.

  • Red/12V/Pin 1 goes to pin C1:7 of the RDM/LDM (The 12V for illumination)
  • Black/GND/Pin 3 goes to pin C1:13 of the RDM/LDM (Ground for the window switch)

The LDM/RDM only have one connector. called C1:

LDM/RDM C1

Image Image

After you're finished with your wiring I'd recommend tapeing the wires up with something like felt tape, so that they don't rattle while driving or playing music!

Simplified, the wiring for the pocket lights should look like this: Pocket light -------- DDM + PDM: Hooks into window switch cables 1 -------------------- C2:4 (12V) 3 -------------------- C2:17 (GND)

Pocket light -------- LDM + RDM: Hooks into window switch cables 1 -------------------- C1:7 (12V) 3 -------------------- C1:13 (GND)

Time for the ground lights!

Wiring these connectors up are super simple as well. Here's the pinout for the ground light connectors, note the orientation here as well!!

Wiring

Image

3 is 12V, red cable

1 is GND, black cable.

Your end result should be something like this: Image Image

These both have to connect to the DDM/PDM and the pinouts are the same for each side.

  • Red/12V/Pin 3 goes to pin C1:16
  • Black/GND/Pin 1 goes to pin C1:7

Here's the pinout for connector C1:

DDM/PDM C1

Image Image

The wiring should end up looking like this: Ground light ------- DDM + PDM: 1 ------------------- C1:7 (GND) 3 ------------------ C1:16 (12V)

After that use some felt tape around the wires, connect the pocket lights and close all of the door panels up while threading the green connector through the hole that the pocket light is supposed to snap into.

Once the door is fully mounted, connect the green connector into your ground light and snap it into place.

Then - if you bought the same parts I did, your end result should be something like this 🤩

Image Image

I'm a little sad over how dark the pocket lights are, but it's still an improvement from before! Seems to be a theme with Volvo's ambient lighting on these cars 😋

If you've got any questions, ideas or suggestions to improve this post or just in general like things that you'd like to see me post about, feel free to send me an email at hello@debugg.co