Td5 D2 Seats - Heater Switch Panel

Started making some E-bay purchases having made the decision to go all electric and leathery.

The first 'purchase' was an absolute nightmare. I had fallen asleep while searching E-bay on the moby for second hand D2 interiors. They are out there but the prices are questionable. 

I was looking at a complete black electric leather interior priced 'buy it now ' for £895 with £50 p+p on a pallet.  Clearly way out of my range, but that did not stop me from falling asleep with the page still 'open' only to wake up and find I had foolishly pressed the 'buy it now' button and then confirmed the action on the next page as well!  I even had the 'pay now' alerts via email in the inbox.

Flew into an absolute panic, E-bay would do nothing, the transaction was legitimate in their eyes. I had to send the most fawning, begging and apologetic message to the vendors in the only hope that they would cancel the transaction from their side, which thankfully they did! The 'Gentlemen of Salvage' indeed, and a lesson learned...

CENTRE CONSOLE SWITCHES.

This is where the heated seat switches are located. I have been looking at these for a while now and have missed a couple of bargains on E-bay. The current going price for an individual switch is £20-25 with the complete switch panel upto £60.

I managed to get a complete switch panel (mount plate, seven switches and the finishing plate ) for £22 posted. I remember thinking that the wording of the advert talked about a 'heated seat switch' but it showed the complete unit. It wasn't till the box arrived that I felt chuffed. 

Front and rear views of the new centre console switch panel straight out of the box. 

The locating tags for the cover plate are intact and the switch faces are clean. I have not tested any of the switches and don't expect any problems.

I am wondering what it is about those heated seat switches that makes them so expensive (£20+ ) even second hand? I read that the current draw for the heating elements is a severe 115 watt so maybe their switch rating warrants this but having said that I noticed other vehicles seat switches are not that pricey (D3 and RR are half that price.)

The walnut trim for the top plate.

It looks like it won't fit but that's just perspective distortion from the switch plate being angled slightly.

Bought this trim plate what seems like a long time ago and must admit it was the inspiration to install the heated seats as I felt installing it onto Hx with the blanked out switch positions visible would be a mistake and only a constant reminder of what should of been there ...

PLUG AND PLAY.

Hx already has the loom connectors for the heater switches wired into its loom or 'main harness' as Rave calls it. When I replaced the handbrake gaiter and removed the centre console switch panel, I noticed the unused connectors just sitting there behind the existing switch panel. Seeing them in there and knowing what they were used for was another big incentive to get them fitted.

Installing the switches should be a walk in the park.

Fitting the Switches.

The two heated seat switches were removed from the donor switch panel and offered up to the switch panel in Hx. The Switch panels have differing face plates determined by whether the heated seat switches are fitted or not, but the underlying switch mounting plate that the actual switch bodies are mounted onto has the same 'pattern' in every D2.

Also present on every D2 will be the two multi-pin connector plugs caught up in the spaghetti of connectors for the window switches behind the mounting plate!

During their install it became obvious that the heated seat switch bodies are 'sided' with plastic ridges on the side of their bodies to ensure that they only fit the RH or LH positions on the base plate. This was a bit puzzling till I realised that the 5-pin connectors from the vehicle loom are themselves 'sided' and also of differing colours. The LH seat connector is green and the RH connector is black. I guess this means that searching for spares has to stipulate which side the switch is for as the switches are not interchangeable! I have already noted that the 2nd hand prices for these D2 switches are high and perhaps this feeds into that pricing?

LH switch body showing the 'sided' ridges on the end.

Note the matching notches on the mounting plate.

This last image also shows the LH Green and the RH Black 5-pin connectors fished out from all the  spaghetti back there!

With the switch bodies mounted correctly, the attachment of the nearby 5-pin plugs is easy and uncomplicated, truly 'plug and play'!

Pimping the Trim Plate.

Fitted the 'Walnut' style trim plate to the Centre console switch panel. Some careful positioning was required and the instructions for the mounting were carefully followed. 1- Clean the surface with Meths.  2 -Warm the trim plate up before peeling off the backing paper. 3- Press home hard to complete the bonding.

After a short wait, the trim plate was fitted onto Hx and a photo was taken. Guess I can now call the heated seat install complete!

 

Td5 D2 Seats - More Options

The question remains whether I should just upgrade the existing seats to the heated option and re-trim them in leather or go all out and fit electric leather seats with armrests and their additional controls?

The extra work does not put me off and it does seem the logical thing to do. Why should I strip down the existing seats to re-trim them, fit the heating pads and then modify the lumbar/armrest mount when I could get all that built in to a set of electric seats? 

Plus, I can prepare the 'new' seats away from Hx and not be as constrained to complete the work on them as I would if I only had the existing seats in Hx to work on.

Prices for 2nd hand interiors are falling and I should be looking to spend up to £250 for all the seats in black leather plus the seat controls and centre console.

Installing the heating elements onto fabric seats seems a no-no. I mean, after many bleak winter morning icy starts, I can honestly say I never thought 'Jeez, these seats are cold'. I reckon it's a different story with leather covered seats. Having said that, I have always thought that electric adjustment would never be used after it had been 'set', I mean no one else drives HX but me.

So there is a lot of indecision here and I can't seem to pin down my thinking one way or the other. I had a good study of Rave regarding the electric seat operation and the seat construction, but also the routing of the electric seat wiring and looms.

That has given me the confidence to go fully electric and I should start by listing and sourcing the components that I will need and think about a program of work to implement the conversion.

Here goes..

1  -  Black leather seats front and back.

2  -  Front seats must be electric and have
        Armrests and heating.

3  -  Seat switches and wiring loom x2

4  -  Centre console with apertures for the
        seat controls. Or modify existing one.

5  -  Centre console heating switches and
        finishing panel.

6  -  Walnut trim for switch panel...

Td5 D2 Seats - Trim Options

Since owning Hx, I have always had the notion to upgrade the seats to leather with heating and possibly electric adjustment. 

Always thought doing it would be a bit of a cosmetic folly given the other cosmetic issues with Hx. But having made recent progress with those, taking on a project now to upgrade the seats is possible and achievable....  its only money,  four bolts and lots of gumption...!!

Over the years I have looked into what's available for the Discovery 2 interior and came up with a wish list. Heated seats, armrests, leather upholstery, electric adjustment.

Hx has standard hard wearing black fabric seats and they are still in a reasonable cosmetic condition. Even the drivers bolster is still holding its shape. The only damage on any of the seats is on the drivers lower side. The 'vinyl' side piece is torn slightly along a wear line. Research has found a UK supplier of the exact same fabric for any re-trimming purposes.

The front seats have manually adjustable lumbar support. I have always set the drivers seat lumbar to fully on. The electric seats have an inflatable lumbar support c/w pump built into the frame. Arm rests are only available on electric seats and they use the mounting that the manual lumbar adjustment uses . If I was to install them onto Hx now, I would loose the manual lumbar function...

The seat frames, mountings and cushion/foam pads are the same accross the range. The electric motors, relays, lumbar pump and the wiring looms are all mounted to the metal seat frame.

The available seat covers for the D2 are all interchangeable and they mount the same way onto the seat cushions. It is thus possible to re-trim the fabric seats in Hx with any other Discovery 2 seat trim.

Hx does not have the wiring loom for electric seats but it does have the loom and the connections for manual seat heating.

To install the manual heated seat option into Hx, I will need to get the heating pads for the cushions and a pair of switches for the centre console. This has been the path I have chosen to follow.

I have actively searched on E-bay and have so far bought one (manual) seat pad for the back 'squab' cushion plus a walnut trim-plate to finish off the center console switch plate, there is nothing like getting your priorities right!!

Bits and Bobs (2)

NEW ARRIVALS.

Started to gather together some bits and bobs to resurrect another dormant project....

This is a 'walnut' trim plate for the central switch console. I sourced this from 'Custom Cars' on E-bay and have bought other walnut trim pieces for Hx from them.

I have searched E-bay for the switches and the switch-plate and have missed out twice on a good bargain due to waiting till the last minute before bidding and then forgetting to do it!

The trim panel actually arrived a few months ago and was the prompt to acquire the switches. Big clue here is in the blanked-over switch plates. That is where the switches for the heated seats are mounted. Hx does not have heated seats, but after doing the research it soon will.....

This week's E-bay bargain. New, unused and with the sticky mount tabs intact. A 'manual' seat-back heating pad for £18. That's below half price and they are still available new from LR aftermarket suppliers. Each seat has two pads, so it's back to the search...

HGT500050 MANUAL

Always wondered exactly how the heated elements were laid out inside the pad. These photos were taken with the pad stuck to a window to 'backlight' the wire element. It winds it's way all around the pad like this. The white plug connects both pads together.

THE CHINA CONNECTION. 

Bought some electrical connectors dirt cheap off E-bay. They are what I term 'Tyco' type/pattern connectors and come in a bag all dismantled and jumbled up.

They look like a bag of juicy wine gums.

... good enough to eat !

The above ones are 6-way male/female connectors and I plan to rewire the sunroof switches with these. I also bought some 3-way connectors shown below (in a slightly more assembled condition)

One of these will definitely be used on the P38 light install.... ideal.

COVER GRAPHICS..

Always thought the rear wheel cover provides a good space for displaying some custom graphics. Nine times out of ten times its just used for some cheap Land Rover dealer advertising. Even so , it can be a buzz when another Landy is seen with the same 'dealer' sign on the back, especially if its one from far away..

When I had the old 300tdi, the rear cover was from 'Hillendale' up in Pendle and used a small little witch on a broom graphic. ...hmm, very fitting! Even to this day, I still look out for them!

Hx arrived with a boring 'South-West 4x4' cover and eventually I decided to replace it and make Hx a bit more individual.

The rise of vinyl-graphic print shops means that getting a one-off vinyl sticker printed is not that expensive and the hardest part is deciding what to actually put on the cover design...

  

ROUTING THE CABLES. 

Installing the red rear door marker lamps and the white front door puddle lights meant getting down to routing some cabling into the door cavities.

The work was done whilst the door cards were removed during the panel spraying.

I used spare 2 core speaker cabling sourced from the aftermarket speakers that I had purchased earlier. The cabling had the standard 'black' and 'black/white' trace colouring and throughout the install I used solid black for the negative/earth connection and the white trace for the positive connection. 

Front door lights were straight-forward. The feed was from the footwell lamps and the new cabling passed through the existing door loom grommet. The new cabling was looped around the existing cabling where possible but also cable ties and tape were used to secure the new cabling and guard against potential chaffing.

The rear door was routed through the B pillar then down to the floor and along the inside of the carpet finishing strip to end up also in the front footwell.

All the above photos show the routing of the cabling through the B-pillar. This was slow and awkward but once sussed it was easy enough and made doing the other side a breeze.

The inspection mirror was invaluable in assessing the situation and use was made of 'that piece of wire' as a cable puller....

Td5 D2 bodywork - Heater Blower Hole (6)

Two weeks plus since I applied some sealer to the blower intake /bulkhead joint and I have to report no rainwater ingress at all!  

The cover that I fashioned from tinplate has still not been fitted. There has been some sustained and torrential downpours that were good candidates for a wet footwell, but not even 'feeling' for any wetness up by the blower motor mounts has produced any signs of water ingress.

I have now even taken away the 'drip-tray' that lived in the passenger footwell to catch any drips when parked up.

If I am to conclude that the leak point was the joint between bolt 3 and 4 and that the applied sealer has now sealed the gap, there still remains the question of how does the rainwater get to run along that joint in the first place??

                        Rusty bolt no4.

I am confident that the bottom edge of the windscreen is sealed, so that leaves very little conventional paths for run-off water to follow.

When using the Borroscope to view the blower intake mounting bolts, I removed the nearby circular plastic blanking plate from the plenum chamber thinking it would give easier access for the borroscope. It popped off easily and was not sealed down in any way.

On reflection, I now think that this could well be the access point for the rainwater to get beneath the plenum cover. Don't forget there are two of these circular covering plugs on the plenum cover and also attention was drawn to the wiper mountings which are rusty and could do with a re-furb.

While the cover plug was removed, it was treated to a black respray as it was very faded.

.. It was more faded then those wheel arches! ..

Here is the same circular plastic 'plug' in place on the plenum cover.  It would probably be prudent to smear some sealant around the joint just to deny water any access to what's below  ie.  the blower intake! 

In the above photo, the windscreen is to the right and the bonnet to the left. On the very edge of the bonnet can be seen the creeping menace of the dreaded lacquer peel.

Td5 D2 electrics - P38 Courtesy Light (3)

More thoughts about fitting the Courtesy light unit. 

The lighting unit has 6 spring clips that locate it in a suitable opening in the overhead console. I will have to fashion this opening on the Hx console and hope that some clearance exists to the sunroof motor which will be directly above the unit.

The overhead console in Hx is the original manual sunroof version that I modified earlier to an electric version in order to house the switch panel for the sunroof motors. It shouldn't be difficult to modify it further to accept the new lighting unit.

The original 'manual' console fitted to Hx.

 A fitted 'electric' console.

I plan to install the P38 light on the flat panel at the rear of the console. The console in Hx currently has a metal panel attached to cover the gap from when I cut out the recess for the manual sunroof handle..

Hx console after 'electric' modification.

The thin metal plate has two screw mountings to hold it in place. The second to last photo shows a cctv monitor on the plate that I was thinking of installing there before the P38 light option presented itself. 

I have noted that the Freelander and P38 install is direct to the headlining material and use is made of a metal mounting ring as an edge reinforcement for the headlining aperture. This gives the spring clips something to 'push' against to attach to and hold the unit secure. It can be seen in the photo from Rave showing the connector location and I wonder if having it on Hx would make the install any easier?  

    

Above photo shows the six spring clips that retain the light unit on the headlining.

Also shown to the left of the nearest retainer is the plastic 'shoulder' which must also be accommodated in the mounting aperture. 

A side-on view showing the depth of the spring clips.

The additional piece of plastic by the clip has been cut from the console in Hx and represents the thickness of the console plastic in that area. 

Hopefully, this thickness should be enough to attach the light unit too provided I can cut the aperture to the correct shape and size. Having that 'metal aperture ring' would be really helpful for that task. 

Some careful measuring will be required... The best option may well be to make an aperture template to aid the marking out..

Td5 D2 electrics - P38 Courtesy Light (2)

More research into fitting the P38 lighting unit. 

It arrived with bulbs already fitted but I decided to replace the tungsten bulbs with LEDs. Red in the middle with white either side.

Fortunately, the Rave copy I have also contains info on the Freelander1 and the P38 Range Rover, so I already had access to the wiring schematics.

This is the control board for the lights. The three push switches are at the top and the 4 circuit board terminals are at the bottom  ( I have already labelled them to correspond with the Rave schematics ).

The first thing I wanted to know is what does  the loom connector look like.?

  Rave and the web to the rescue... 

Three photos of  'C0355'.  It's a custom right angled board connector of a kind I haven't encountered before. It has 4 terminals available but only three (1,3,4) are used in the Freelander install.

The last photo shows one of the terminals removed from the connector body and it can be seen how it would 'pinch' onto the circuit board tails.

This photo from the Web is of a Discovery 'Metropolis' and shows the same connector in use. The three wires are the same ones used to connect the front courtesy lamp on every D2.

So, it would seem that all I need to do is get hold of one of these connectors and wire it onto Hx and connect up.....  As if...

Reading up on the Web about these connectors revealed a lot of common connection problems leading to inoperative lights. Corrosion of the Earth  
(black wire, terminal 1) connector is down to the flimsy construction and water ingress probably from a leaky sunroof. If this connection fails then none of the lights will work in 'manual' mode. 

Here is s close up of a connector terminal. It's construction does seem a bit fancy to me. I can easily see how even when attached, it's design will allow moisture access to the terminals. 

I can probably only source this connector from a breakers yard and assuming it to be in good condition I will still need to lengthen the wires or even remake the connections to the flimsy terminals. 

A better solution would be to solder 3 cables direct to the board terminals, insulate them with 'hot-melt' and run the cables to the installed front interior light on Hx were they will connect via a generic 3-way connector to the loom of Hx. .....  job done..

I got a bit carried away with the Freelander wiring schematics. Quite rightly so, because it closely resembles what is already on Hx. The big problem I was soon to encounter is that this unit is designed for the P38.

A big clue is in the P38 schematic. The same black connector is used but all 4 terminals are wired and connect to the board on the unit. The P38 connector has its own ID  number. . C329.

A photo of my notes from the P38 schematic. Terminals 1,2,3, have the same function (but not the same terminals)  as the Freelander install, and will be the terminals that I will use for Hx.

T4 on the P38 board runs straight across the board without connecting to any component on the board. It then feeds the black micro switch mounted off-board (at the top of the picture) which returns a wire back on to the board to then exit at T1. 

That black micro-switch is 'non-latching' and it's function is to generate an earth path via T1 which after 2 seconds causes the vehicle computer/bcu to 'deny' any further 'requests' for any internal light to operate until the switch is again held down for another two seconds.

This function is better explained in the P38 Drivers Handbook where it mentions an accompanying 'beep' from the dashboard console each time the function is selected.

I fail to see the benefit of this 'function' particularly as it denies the use of the switch to 'manually' operate the central lamp.

I need to work out how to achieve this before I install the unit on Hx. First thing to do is to strip-out that central black non-latching micro-switch and replace it with a latching one the same as the other two micro-switches.  Next will be to run a wire direct from the 'negative' central lamp contact direct to the switch and then replicate the return path from the current switch back to the board.

This should give me the functionality that I desire:

(1) - Automatic switching and fading of the central light via  BCU earth on T2
(2) - Manual switching of all three lamps via the micro-switches and earth T1
(3) - Constant 12v supply to all lamps at T3 

Can't help thinking with hindsight that I should have bought the Freelander version of this lighting unit. It uses a different design of circuit board but has all the functionality I desire inbuilt. And crucially, it has 3 latching micro switches on board....

Aside from the wiring issues, the other hurdle to overcome is how am I going to attach this unit to the overhead console in Hx...?

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