I do not like the light in the paddle shifters, do not need that kind of illumination to remind me which is down, which is up.

Now, I'm not good at electronics (1), and sorry if it would have been asked before - could not find the answer searching the forum -,
but I was wondering which of the three cables would power the shifter led only, if any?
Maybe someone figured that out already. Got a tester, and gave that one a go, but am still clueless - see 1...

I've been thinking to go Hollywood style - I.e. black, hmm, maybe red, no, it must be black, red, red, and then in the end cut the grey, but I'm not sure that would be the right approach

Any help on this subject is greatly appreciated.

 

The schematics show the three wires on the steering wheel side of that connection (both sides) as:
Pos 1 - Power - Blue
Pos 2 - Resistive ladder - Orange
Pos 3 - Ground - Black

Normally position 1 is closest to the key slot on that style of connector housing, so position 1 should be the red, 2 the grey and 3 the black.

Which one to remove? None, you may need to remove the LED from the board (or replace with one of the aluminium versions without the LED). There is no current monitoring on that circuit so removing the LED or cutting the trace shouldn't cause any issues.

Each side feeds back to the right hand wheel switch pack where it is treated as another resistive input along with the other buttons there so it can determine which was pressed. Hence the name of resistive ladder. In order for that to work the switch needs to be referenced to ground at rest, and power when active, so both of the other wires are required.

 

Aha... Have two sets of shifters, so I don't messing around with them. Guess I'll look for a "hardware" solution then.
I.e. cut the plastic piece through which the light travels to the top of the shifter, or blind the led in some way.

Thank you for your valuable insight Dave - much appreciated

 

Removing the light pipe will certainly dim it, but it may still be faintly visible. That may be a desired effect though - try it and see what you think?

Otherwise you can just take a sharp craft knife and cut through the PCB trace/wire directly in front of the LED, or else desolder it from the board if you have the tools. It won't trigger any errors as the OEM aluminium paddles just don't have the LED fitted to their board, but are otherwise the same.