Never satisfied with customizing my Volvo, I wanted to add interior lights to it since it was something that came in my previous car. This might be Scandinavian sacrilege to some, but with the EX30 coming with illumination, I had to give it a try.
Installation Guide + Video:
EX30 Lights:
My Lights (Brightness boosted for visibility):
Things you’ll need
- Find where you would like to place your lights. I chose the curves in the door cards and the gaps in the dash.
- Do a test fit of your light strips to make sure they fit. You will have to apply a lot of pressure to get them to slot in. You can also take a knife and cut away the creases to make it easier to slot them in.
- Once the test fit is complete, mark where you would like the pass-through to be. The strips have a bit of black and a cable that hangs off the end. That white plug attached to the cable is pretty wide. If you have a Dremel, I’d make a rectangular cut or just use a drill. The gap will seem unsightly, but you can always cover it up later.
- VERY IMPORTANT. ALWAYS TEST THE LIGHTS BEFORE DISASSEMBLY. You never know if something is faulty. Test all the lights that come with the kit of your choice and make sure they power on. See the video for more details.
- Take off the door cards of all the doors. There is normally a total of 3 torx 25 screws holding them in place for the front and rear. For the front doors, you’ll have to remove the speakers at the top using a trim removal tool. Please be careful not to break the tabs on them.
- The door cards are a pain to get off, so start from the bottom and work your way up.
- Use your 12V testing tool. Look in the wiring harness to find 12V power. In the driver door, this is BLACK AND PURPLE + BLACK AND RED. Each door is different, so you will have to test each plug individually.
- Make the necessary cuts to the door cards to get the wires to slide through.
- Double-check the strips to make sure they’re all flush, and then put all the door cards back together after connecting the newly added strips to the remote hubs in each door panel.
- The next thing is figuring out how you want to route your central lights that run across the dash. I decided to have them both meet on the passenger side by routing the left-hand light cables behind the air vents and tucking them where the glove box is. Fortunately, the kit does come with an extension cable, so no matter where you place the main hub in your car, it should be able to connect.
- Finding a power source for the main box is the most difficult part. I recommend connecting it to the fuse box via a fuse tap. However, for the life of me, I could not find a grounding bolt under the carpet, and I didn’t feel like ripping up my interior. Your choice, of course. I went with a cigarette lighter adapter because I was in a rush to get this project done and didn’t have time to fiddle with my daily driver.
- Once the lights are all connected and confirmed to be working, just work on cable routing and getting everything to look neat. I spent a lot of time off camera working on it, and I’m still not quite satisfied, so I’ll probably do a follow-up.
This project is relatively easy as long as you’re mindful of your cable routing and find safe ways to connect to 12V power. A lot of the difficulty comes from just figuring out where things go, but once you get a feel for it, it’s exponentially easier. These kits can be ordered to have a multitude of parts, but I wanted something simple. Some warnings, however:
- The wires are annoyingly fragile at the connection point and will fray for no other reason
- The double-sided adhesive is….ass. And a pain to use. Use anything else
- The app is labeled and translated poorly, but the connection speed is good and consistent
- Alligator clips and other wiring connection tools are your friends.’
I hope this guide was helpful or at least entertaining 