Final Dashboard Setup

[Graham Thomson]

Ok chaps, here are some 'final' dash pictures.....got to spend money over the next 3 months or so on a 2-storey house extension...spare spends will be in short supply!!

[Tris Cocks]

Looks very nice....you have definately done a good job and put alot of thought into it.

[Landowner]

where did you get the top pod from ?

[lansalot]

Fantastic. I think I just got an idea on how to cover up all my seriously harsh looking wiring

With that in mind, here's my "before". "After" to follow once I get my arse in gear.

(ps - quite proud of my centre switch console... )

[western]

where did you get the top pod from ?

it's a Mudstuff pod. www.mudstuff.co.uk

looks good Graham

[MudAllOverIt]

I recently finished mine as well. This was one hell of a god-awful mess before I got it all into the Mud Console and Mud Pod. Stripped the whole dash out so that the wiring could be laid in properly.

[lansalot]

£45 is a hell of a lot for a bit of plastic though... ?

[Landowner]

£45 is a hell of a lot for a bit of plastic though... ?

Trust a scot to come out with that

[lansalot]

Actually, I was born in Dagenham. Ha !

[MudAllOverIt]

Actually, I was born in Dagenham. Ha !

And I'm a Scot living in Scotland and happily paid the £45...

So much for your stereotypes

[Mondo]

Graham,

That looks good, all your planning and hard work have paid off.

Seeing that makes me wish I had a civvy spec Land Rover... yours is like the dec k of the USS Enterprise compared to my MOD Bare Neccessities special!

Fantastic. I think I just got an idea on how to cover up all my seriously harsh looking wiring

(ps - quite proud of my centre switch console... )

Seriously scary stuff.. beware if the travellers see all that copper in your dash, they'll swipe your Defender and sell it to a scrap metal dealer just for the copper value...

[Graham Thomson]

it's a Mudstuff pod. www.mudstuff.co.uk

looks good Graham

Their stuff is quality and they are fair and professional.

[stuntman]

Graham, where did you get all the components from, ie the brown infill panel??? Etc, I really like that, oh and want one!

[yellow]

The brown fill-in panel is an airco set up. Basically the set up which was installed on vehicles up until 1990 I believe...

[stuntman]

Where can I get one? Does anyone know??

[callum]

second hand i would think. the part has most likely been discontinued. i expect it would also cost a ridiculous ammount of money if you could get it from a land rover parts counter.

[FridgeFreezer]

Lansalot - can I humbly suggest you purchase some wire colours other than black & red?

[Mr Bean]

Looks very good, some good work gone in there.

[lansalot]

Lansalot - can I humbly suggest you purchase some wire colours other than black & red?

I'm a simple man. Red = ouchy! Black = safe ! Simple

Amazingly, I actually know what they all do - well, I should, I've had it all apart often enough.

I don't know how to do tidy wiring, it always amazes me when I see others doing it like it's some black art. You should have seen it before I made my little distribution board. And you reeeeally should have seen it when I bought it... The special was the little wire with about 7 ends that was powering, ooh, practically everything which had (surprise!) melted the sheath clean off it before burning out. How the whole thing never went up in smoke is a miracle.

Wish I'd taken some "before" photos now - you'd see what a vast improvement it actually is

[FridgeFreezer]

I don't know how to do tidy wiring, it always amazes me when I see others doing it like it's some black art.

A few easy points:

1) Don't buy all one colour & all one size wire. Colour codes make your life easier. You know what they all do now, but in a couple of years' time when something stops working and it's all covered in mud and buried under other things, trying to trace the red wire in a bundle of red wires is going to be tricky. The standard (BS187a) wiring code makes reasonable sense, so use it.

2) Buy a decent crimper and a party selection of crimp terminals.

3) Buy 1000 small cable ties and 1000 big cable ties and use as many as possible, tied-up wiring is tidier and also more reliable because it's not all floating about, getting tangled up, and chafing on things.

4) Never never never never never use ScotchLoks. Ever. They are neither big nor clever.

5) Buy some heat-shrink sleeving / sprial binding / tube / hose / anything to protect your wires, especially where they go through panels. Grommets are not an expensive luxury. Buy a party pack, then you'll always have one to hand. B&Q et al sell cable glands, sleeving, junction boxes, and grommets so there's no excuse.

6a) Plan ahead - whilst running a battery feed for your new spotlight relay, ask yourself if you're going to be fitting any more spotlights, a fridge, a CB, etc. and if maybe it's worth running in a decent sized 12v feed that could supply many things in one, and sticking some sort of bus-bar or distribution point on the end. One big cable from your battery will be much neater and more reliable than 10 shaky ring termianals jostling for the last few threads on the battery connector bolt with a variety of red wires of varying sizes hanging off.

6b)The same goes for fuse boxes - adding 3 circuits? Then buy an 8-way fuse box and install it, it will cost almost nothing extra but will make your life much easier next time as you won't need to pull the truck apart to add another feed, another fuse holder, etc...

6c) Trailer cable is handy, if you're running several wires in, use a length of trailer cable and you'll not only have an easier job (one cable to pull in instead of several) but you'll have a few spare cores for future growth. It also contains all different wire colours

7) Don't splice four short bits of wire together where just running in a nice new bit will do.

8) Don't rely on a 20-year-old factory loom to behave itself - if in doubt, do things properly from scratch with minimal contact with the main loom.

9) Fuses are not fancy extras. Fuse everything as close to the power source as practical. Trying to keep all your fuses in one place (EG the fusebox) is far easier than having 20 different inline fuse holders floating about the vehicle.

10) Sparky tape is very rarely useful for anything that's required to be permanent or reliable.

Oh and because some people find it confusing, electricity works in a similar way to hydraulics:

Amps are the flow

Volts are pressure

Watts are the power (Amps x Volts, which means to work out how many amps a thing will draw you divide its wattage by 12 Volts)

Ohms (resistance) is a restriction (more ohms = more restriction = less flow, less ohms = more load = you need a bigger pipe to carry the flow)

The battery is the pump

A short circuit is a hole in the pipe

Hope this helps!

[dirkthe1]

i might actually have to sort my wiring out soon-this has inspired me. i thinki asked beofre, but now im confused.

sorry if this is thread hi jacking, but its a tangent.

on a mil spec 1987 90, is it easier to re wire the whole loom, rather than just put a blade fuse box in? i will rip the dash out if needs be, as my speedo needs changing anyway.

[PaulMc]

Where can I get one? Does anyone know??

Most of it is still available (see attachments from Feb.2008 Microcat),

but I don't think you'll be worrying a dealer with an order anytime soon

Paul.

[lansalot]

A few easy points:

1) Don't buy all one colour & all one size wire. Colour codes make your life easier. You know what they all do now, but in a couple of years' time when something stops working and it's all covered in mud and buried under other things, trying to trace the red wire in a bundle of red wires is going to be tricky. The standard (BS187a) wiring code makes reasonable sense, so use it.

2) Buy a decent crimper and a party selection of crimp terminals.

3) Buy 1000 small cable ties and 1000 big cable ties and use as many as possible, tied-up wiring is tidier and also more reliable because it's not all floating about, getting tangled up, and chafing on things.

4) Never never never never never use ScotchLoks. Ever. They are neither big nor clever.

5) Buy some heat-shrink sleeving / sprial binding / tube / hose / anything to protect your wires, especially where they go through panels. Grommets are not an expensive luxury. Buy a party pack, then you'll always have one to hand. B&Q et al sell cable glands, sleeving, junction boxes, and grommets so there's no excuse.

6a) Plan ahead - whilst running a battery feed for your new spotlight relay, ask yourself if you're going to be fitting any more spotlights, a fridge, a CB, etc. and if maybe it's worth running in a decent sized 12v feed that could supply many things in one, and sticking some sort of bus-bar or distribution point on the end. One big cable from your battery will be much neater and more reliable than 10 shaky ring termianals jostling for the last few threads on the battery connector bolt with a variety of red wires of varying sizes hanging off.

6b)The same goes for fuse boxes - adding 3 circuits? Then buy an 8-way fuse box and install it, it will cost almost nothing extra but will make your life much easier next time as you won't need to pull the truck apart to add another feed, another fuse holder, etc...

6c) Trailer cable is handy, if you're running several wires in, use a length of trailer cable and you'll not only have an easier job (one cable to pull in instead of several) but you'll have a few spare cores for future growth. It also contains all different wire colours

7) Don't splice four short bits of wire together where just running in a nice new bit will do.

8) Don't rely on a 20-year-old factory loom to behave itself - if in doubt, do things properly from scratch with minimal contact with the main loom.

9) Fuses are not fancy extras. Fuse everything as close to the power source as practical. Trying to keep all your fuses in one place (EG the fusebox) is far easier than having 20 different inline fuse holders floating about the vehicle.

10) Sparky tape is very rarely useful for anything that's required to be permanent or reliable.

Oh and because some people find it confusing, electricity works in a similar way to hydraulics:

Amps are the flow

Volts are pressure

Watts are the power (Amps x Volts, which means to work out how many amps a thing will draw you divide its wattage by 12 Volts)

Ohms (resistance) is a restriction (more ohms = more restriction = less flow, less ohms = more load = you need a bigger pipe to carry the flow)

The battery is the pump

A short circuit is a hole in the pipe

Hope this helps!

Thanks, some good advice there. Logically, I can see what I'm doing in here - really, I was just wanting to cleanly re-wire existing accessories (the switches in the centre console are front-spots, rear-spots, work-light and engine fans) so things were maintainable and reasonably accessible. Oh, and they actually worked (thanks, previous owner!)

The black-box is a distribution-bar, and all 4 relays are powered from terminals on it.

Ideally, I'd like to move the relays into a waterproof box in the engine bay instead thus clearing them out of the dash, but that's for another time. When I do that, I'll look into making it a bit more tidy

[stuntman]

Most of it is still available (see attachments from Feb.2008 Microcat),

but I don't think you'll be worrying a dealer with an order anytime soon

Paul.

How much!!!!!!!!!!

I rockon I'll be building my own

[FridgeFreezer]

on a mil spec 1987 90, is it easier to re wire the whole loom, rather than just put a blade fuse box in? i will rip the dash out if needs be, as my speedo needs changing anyway.

Depends how ratty your loom is - you can't polish a turd. If it's in reasonable and unmolested condition then I believe it's a fairly easy thing to put a blade fusebox in.