First off I fitted a couple of terminal block links behind the fuse board.
The one on the left is for ignition live and the one on the right is a convenient ground. For reference the ground is connected to the chassis via one of the cabin fuseboard (the original LR one) mounting bolts, and the ignition feed is taken from here:
(The big old yellow wire). I could have taken the ground from here too but for me nothing beats the chassis for a strong connection.
The fuseboard back in place, with the toys hooked up (although I have labelled the fuses now and applied heatshrink to the power connection).
That's right, 2 ancillaries. One is the boot socket as shown already but the other...
Is a flexible neck maplight. The 3 door Freelander isn't well equipped when it comes to cabin lighting, it's just a basic courtesy light behind the sunroofs. This maplight will come in handy if the passenger (the wife) needs to find anything in the dark (handbag). It fit's perfectly in the blank that would have been for the electric mirros switch on LHD models.
Duck mascot courtesy of "What the duck?".
Whilst I was taming electrons, I decided to finally fit my driving lights to the front of the car. The brackets were the first thing I bought (again PowefulUK) but after reading nightmares of seized bolts and much awkwardness I put it off.
In truth, it was a bloody nightmare. The bumper - wing "nuts" had seized onto the bolt and when I tried to unbolt them they just tore themselves apart making it impossible to grip and undo. In the end (after 2 hours of trying to do it "elegantly" I remembered my cordless dremel, and managed to grind the bolts enough to break them clear, although this was still awkward and I had to do it blind.
But off they came and I just had to drill the bumper bar, fit some M8 nutserts and refit the bumper. Typically after taking 2 hours to remove the bumper, the rest of the job was achieved in about 30 minutes...
One thing I'll say, it's worth having the right tools. Years ago when working on my van I needed to install some M8 nutserts, and as my standard kit only went to M6 I bought a tool sold by, you guessed it, PowerfulUK (how prophetic). Turned out I didn't need it for the van but it was a godsend for this job.
Yeah, they're a bit tatty but they've been in a dusty shed for 6 months...
The guards match the headlight guards too!
The bumper bolts were replaced with regular allen bolts and nuts with repair washers top and bottom, all in stainless...
Onto the wiring side, I got creative with some aluminium plate (the same as used for the fuseboard) and made a bracket that is held in place in front of the battery, secured by the battery clamp bolt.
What we have here is the main fuse for the auxiliary fuseboard, and 2 relay bases (one for the lights and one for future expansion). There's also a load of spare room if I need to add more...
It was only after making and fitting this that I discovered Land Rover have a similar solution which slots in place next to the battery tray. I was tempted to get one of these but they only seem to be part of a kit, and they don't have provision for the large fuseholder.
Yeah I'm not proud of the scotchlock, but at least it's just the signal for the relay...
Oh and one more thing, when LR showed the convenient grommet in the bulkhead to thread the wiring through, they neglected to show how awkward it was when you have aircon pipework in the way...
Much scraping of fingers and a bit of bleeding (and a lot of swearing) later and the power feed was through...
