Trim removal in hatch area

I've been doing some forum and YouTube recon to try to figure this out, but I'm having a hell of a hard time with a couple trim pieces in the rear of the car in the hatch area that are preventing me from being able to install some trailer harness wiring and run a power line from the hatch under the floor trim up to the battery.

These are the two pieces I'm struggling with:


I found 2 Torx screws in the piece in the rear passenger area that I got out, but aside from that I can't find any obvious screws. At the same time, it seems like there may be something more significant than just clips holding them in. I already snapped a couple of plastic clips getting some of the other trim off and don't want to totally hose these by yanking on them too hard.

Any help would be appreciated.

For reference, I found this video for getting one of the pieces I'm stuck with out, but despite getting the 2 Torx screws out it still doesn't seem to want to come out: https://youtu.be/Ky6GTEKrMQU?t=6m35s

Incidentally, do I need any special trim removal tools? I have some basic plastic ones that seem to work for small fasteners, but for ones that require more effort I wonder if I need something a bit more beefy.

Any thoughts, experiences, and input would be most appreciated!

I spilled some gas back there and ran into the same problem. I made a couple cuts to that material where it was hidden behind the plastic, made things much easier.

Interesting, though I'm a bit hesitant to start cutting into the trim pieces.

Do you recall if there are other screw fasteners there, or if the rest of them can be popped out?

Alright, made some progress and figured I would post pics so that it might help others down the road.

Managed to get that top piece out. Turns out that there are no other screws up there - just a few black plastic tabs and two white plastic ones:



And this is what the driver's side area looks like with that piece popped off:



I now have access to the tail light wiring harness (at least on that side of the car), and was able to run the power wire under the floor trim that runs beneath the door. The next big PITA will be running the wire up through the firewall into the engine bay.

Great pics. There is a rubber boot above the pedals on the firewall. Access is good, my sound guy ran power through there.

zrickety said:

Great pics. There is a rubber boot above the pedals on the firewall. Access is good, my sound guy ran power through there.

Click to expand...

Thanks - happy to share what I learned and maybe help other folks in down the road.

+1 on the tip about the access plug above the pedals - that's exactly where I passed my wire through as well. Plenty of room, which has not always been the case in previous vehicles. Glad VW thought ahead on that.

Gotta say, though - the DSG guys have it easy, what with that big extra grommet where the clutch pedal is in the MT cars.