Td5 D2 electrics - puddle/marker lights

Following on from the install of the foot-well lights and having laid out the 12v supply lines around the interior, it was an easy task to extend that circuit to power up and control some door marker and puddle lights.

A brief bit of history.

I used to own a 300tdi Discovery and one day while poking around on it I noticed some rubber bung/ grommet things low down on the front door trailing side. They could only be seen when the door was opened and it puzzled me as to what they were for?

In time it was revealed that the top-of-the-range crowd sported little red marker lamps mounted in these holes that would illuminate whenever the door was opened as some kind of warning or 'marker' to approaching traffic. I found out that the light units were simple rubber grommet mounted push-fits that ran with a single '501' type tungsten bulb behind a red plastic lens.  

Furthermore the same marker lights were used on contemporary Range Rovers of the 'classic' variety.
And they could be found easily on those fancy new Internet trading sites.

Well, I never did get around to installing them, but years later the idea came back to me and it now appears that every car has them incorporated into their door openings. Don't know if this has become a EU type approval/directive on motor manufacture or a 'global market' condition, but they are certainly a more common sight whether they be simple red reflectors or indeed powered bulbs, which in this day and age almost certainly means LED.

Well, I do like all things 'retro' and the thought of retro-fitting these marker lamps into Hx began to really appeal. I knew I could easily swap those nasty hot running 501 tungsten's for LED equivalents so I began the task of sourcing the lamp bodies from the usual suspects...

Seems I'm not alone in this quest and the Internet is now selling these original light fittings at a premium price!

I was about to bite the bullet when some further planning revealed that the rubber-bunged pre-drilled holes in the door frame of the D1 are not there on the D2! Guess that is just another one of those thousand and one improvements that LR claimed when the D2 was unleashed. My enthusiasm did not extend to drilling out those holes so an alternative was needed.

I never did buy the original LR marker lamps but I did source some suitable round grommet mounted red and white LED lamps in sealed enclosures that certainly would be weatherproof and easy enough to fit. I would end up fitting these to the rear passenger doors, but for the front doors I kind of copped out and went for the easy option of some red reflectors mounted onto the door jams. I would however return to the front doors to install some white puddle lights.

Rear Door Marker Lamps

Whilst fitting some new speakers to the rear passenger doors, I took the opportunity to fit one of the circular red LED fittings into the corner of the modified speaker panel. Again I was reluctant to drill through the metal door frame and the flat plastic base of the speaker surround seemed an ideal location...

The door-card needs to be removed for access to the internal wiring loom.

Wiring-up was in theory, simple. I wanted them to work when the door was open. The existing courtesy light circuit on the D2 is ideal for this and all it needed was to be connected into that circuit. Easy in theory but routing the cabling was a big task.

I did think about connecting to the door actuators inside each door and to use them to drive the light. After all, it is their signal of 'unlock' that the BCU interprets to operate the courtesy lights. This would save a lot of hassle routing the supply cable.

Unfortunately, it was not the ideal solution. The BCU has other inputs that allow it to operate the courtesy lights and so it is not solely reliant on a signal from the door lock actuators. For example, removing the key from the ignition also lights up the courtesy lamps before any doors are actually opened.

I decided the simple solution was to run the cabling into the front foot-well to connect into the lighting circuit I had made there which was running perfectly under all conditions and even dimming out gently!

For the cable run I used some spare two-core speaker wire. LEDs run at a tenth of the power consumption so thick gauge wires are not necessary. The standard 'black' and 'black/white' colours of the speaker cable greatly helps in assuring the polarity is maintained when connections are made as LEDs are sensitive to that kind of thing!

Running and Connecting.

The route I chose for the cabling starts behind the speaker grill then follows the fitted wiring loom inside the door frame that supplies the door actuator/window motor /speaker. It passes through the door grommet tube and into the bodyshell 'B' pillar. The lower B pillar trim panel needs to be dislodged to gain access but it does not have to be totally removed (neither does the door aperture seal). Just remove what is necessary to gain access.

These two images show the contorted routing of the cabling through the right-hand B pillar. Use was made of a small inspection mirror and a handy piece of wire was used to help pull the cable through the door grommet and through the B-pillar into the interior. It was not easy and rather frustrating. However, once the method was sorted on one side, the other side was a doddle! 

Once the cable is through the B-pillar it diverts from the fitted loom and emerges at the base of the plastic trim inside the bodyshell. From here it rather sneakily gets routed inside the plastic weatherstrip cover (which is hollow) and heads forwards into the front foot-well, then up behind the kick-plate and into the under dash area where the supply connection will be made.

As the cable is being routed, take every opportunity to secure it as much as possible. This is good practise as it will ensure no potential rattles or entanglements or rubbing and chaffing. Its possible to wrap tape along the existing loom to bind the new cable to it, particularly in the area of the door hinging as this is where the most movement will be.

Being cautious, once the cable was in position and before all the trim was put back I exposed the wiring at each end and did a continuity test with the multi-meter just to prove that there were no breaks in the newly installed wire...  How many times will I learn that Assumption is the Mother of all Fuck-ups?  All was good so I turned back to the marker lamps.

The lamp unit is supplied with about 10cm of twin-core 'tail' attached. First task is to crimp some insulated spade connectors on the ends to match the ones already on the supply cable. I already knew by bench testing that the red wire was '+' so whatever strand of the speaker cable I connected to it I labelled both ends of it with a '+' mark on an attached piece of tape. Its easy to identify the cores by their markings (or lack of!) but it is also so easy to get confused at the other end so a clear label is recommended. Particularly if your inclined like me to stop the job half-way through and return to it days later!!

I liked the idea of using spade connectors as it meant if the LED unit ever failed it could be replaced easily by just prying it out of its housing and disconnecting the spade terminals. Future proofing as well! 

Power Supply.

Hmm... Here are a couple of hand-drawn schematics I did just to get the wiring connections sorted. At this stage I had already fitted some LED lights into the front and the rear foot-well so it was just a question of connecting into that circuit to power the rear door marker lights. It can be seen that I also took the opportunity to connect up the front door puddle lights at the same time...

KEY : J1 and J2 are two-way connectors as shown bottom right.
FNS - front near side    FOS - front off side  (UK model).

Basically, I just cut into the existing circuit that was supplying the foot-well light.

It was pretty much like spaghetti under there and I was determined to make it all neater by using some two-way multi-connectors that did away with the choc-blocks and twisted wires!!

The white twin-wire connectors used to make the short 'fly-leads' can be seen in the last photo. Following the schematic, I was able to assemble the 'fly-leads' away from Hx with some confidence that they would work. And when all the connections were finally made, all the lights worked first time!

Front Door Puddle Lights.

Put a lot of thought into finding the most efficient, compact and easy way to install white light fittings that could be used as 'puddle' lights for the front doors when opened. 

D2's were never fitted with them so there is no ready-made path to follow. Plenty of other vehicles do have them and a bit of research in the real world and online goes a long way in planning how to go about it. There are lots of options and fitments available so it does come down to personal preference.

I decided to use a compact strip of LEDs that are designed to be surface mounted and come encased in resin for isolation/protection and weatherproofing.

I sourced the above 12v LED strips from the Internet for pennies! Their performance and physical dimensions proved ideal for the application. 

They are designed for 'surface-mounting' and come complete with a 3M sticky backed base that has so far performed well.

There are six LED segments on each strip and the 'yellow' toned ones produce a bright white light while the other strip produce 'red' light. There are lots of colour variations available for the adventurous and there are even available LEDs that can vary their colour output..  Bear in mind that when functioning these lights are classed as 'external' vehicle illumination and as such are governed by various Road Traffic Law. 

The puddle lights fitted are of the 'white' variety and the location used was along the bottom lip of the door-card. They are actually mounted on the bottom of the front door 'bin' molding which being made of hard plastic offers a stable base for the adhesive strip to bond to.

Once installed, these LED strips are completely hidden from view and all their light is directed down onto the road surface once the door is opened. 

A lot of modern day cars have 'puddle' lights installed into the base of their external door mirrors and waste a lot of their output illuminating the outer door skin.

 LED strip in place on bottom of the door bin.

A small hole was drilled through the door-card in order to route the supply cable into the door frame where a crimped spade connection connects them to the supply wiring.

Once again, two-core speaker cable was used and it was carefully threaded along the front-door loom, out of the door frame and into the bodyshell to emerge in the upper foot-well area where it connects to the foot-well lighting supply circuit.  


Back to Schematics.

It can be seen that both the 'puddle' light and the 'rear door marker' light share the same supply line via J2/J1. This arrangement was chosen mostly for its neatness and ease of isolation. An added bonus was when after a few months the LH / FNS puddle light developed a fault it was easy to initially diagnose where the problem was. 

Maintenance / Wiring Issues.

Once installed and wired up, the front door puddle lights worked flawlessly for about a year till the LH light failed completely.

Despite all the claims, LEDs can and do fail early on in their working life. Typically they can start to flicker and once in that state they must be replaced. Naturally I was a bit disappointed over the failure, but knowing I had some spares to swap, I saw the failure as a chance to prove how easy it was to change the fittings.

The old school 'tap and bang' method of maintenance does not work on LEDs!!, and reading up about how I installed them and studying the schematic made me begin to question the wiring. Chief concern was with the type of insulated spade connectors that were used to connect the LED strip to the wiring loom behind the door card...

These red plastic insulated spade terminals proved to be unreliable.

The connectors used at that time were the cheap, nasty and just plain ugly plastic collared type. I wrote at the time of my doubts about the security of them chiefly as you cannot easily see that the wire strands make contact with the metal connector. Press too hard with the crimp tool and the plastic will shatter and cut through the connector. Not enough pressure with the crimp tool and well.....

I had to remove the four screws along the base of the door bin and was then able to get a thin wooden wedge between the bottom of the door card and the door frame. There was no need to remove the door-card completely which was a blessing. That gap that opened up along the base was enough to get fingers in behind to dislodge the wiring tails and test the components.

First test was to undo the connectors and apply a 12v test voltage direct to the LED strip. To my delight and surprise the LED strip lit up as normal indicating that the fault lay in the supply wiring to the LED.

After a quick physical check of the spade crimps, one of them just separated from the wire! It was replaced with a better designed connector (one with an additional outer cable gripper). I had the smug grin wiped off my face when I re-connected to the vehicle loom and the LED again failed to light!

So the problem now must be in the supply wiring. I undid the fly lead in the foot-well (J2) and with a multimeter did continuity tests from the connector to the led strip connection. The Earth return was fine but there was no beep for the supply line. 

Again when physically moved, the crimped end of the supply line just parted from the cabling and on inspection it appeared that the wire strands in the cabling had just disintegrated to what looked like powder! I had to strip back the cable a good few inches before solid wire was again found and the multimeter sang sweet. I had never seen cable strands in this state before and it really puzzles me what had gone wrong particularly as it had conducted OK for a year or so..?

Anyway, with new spade connectors attached and the wiring back in place the LED strip returned to life..