Lights on warning buzzer

 

Another feature that sets the Land Rover Defender apart from normal cars is visual "lights on warning system" comprising of 4 warning lights, one positioned on each corner of the car. Normal cars often employ an audible warning system but this cannot be heard from outside the car.
The weakness of the Defenders system is that you need to be facing the car to see the warning lights.
The TDCI defender has a separate switched ground for the drivers door feeding into the ECU and a warning buzzer integrated into the instrument cluster (used for low fuel warning), so it seems Land Rover have made a design decision not to use an audible warning.

In order to augment the Defender system, a buzzer is added here so that both visual and audible warnings can be observed.

The warning buzzer used was sourced from Polevolt. It uses the feed to the side light circuit for power and is grounded through the drivers door switch. The feed from the ignition is used to disable the buzzer so it doesn't sound when the ignition is on.  

 

The first job was to take a feed from the door switch into the dash where the buzzer will be sited. It is difficult to access the point where the loom enters the bulkhead, so a (yellow/red) draw wire was pushed down the existing loom and fished out of the hole where the door loom connects into the bulkhead. A 2mm.sq wire was used as the draw wire as it's stiffness made it easier to push through the loom.

A 10mm hole was drilled in the large oval grommet located on the bulkhead in front of the driver and a length of 7mm I.D. convoluted tubing was feed through into the dash cavity.

 

A T-piece was included to allow the same conduit to be used for the installation of heated mirrors in the future (watch this space).

 

The Yellow/Red draw wire was then used to draw a 1mm2 Grey wire through the bulkhead and into the engine bay.

The end of the grey wire was made off with both male and female spade connectors to allow the existing grey/white factory wire to be connected to the door switch at the same time as the new wire.

 

The wire was then drawn through the rest of the conduit into the dash cavity. 

 

 

The three wires used for the warning buzzer are connected into a standard relay base. For reference, the wire colours are as follows:

•  Grey - Drivers door switch
•  Red/Orange - Side Lights
•  White - Ignition

The grey door switch wire was extended to the fuse box under the cubby so it is available for any further projects.

 



 



 The feed from the side lights was taken from the extension loom that was fitted during the installation of the One Touch Electric Windows.

 

A terminal block was added to the under cubby safe to allow wires to be terminated in a central location. The safe is shown here with the fused distribution and relay boxes.

The carpet was pulled back and mounting holes were drilled before fitting M5 rivnuts.

 

The carpet was glued back in position before the 10 way terminal block was bolted in with stainless M5 hex head bolts.  

The terminal block is shown here with the wires terminated with 4mm brass ring terminals. The white wire is connected into the ignition switched bank with a 7.5 amp fuse.  

 

 

To position the warning buzzer, the instrument cluster was removed and a 5mm hole was drilled to allow the relay base to be mounted.

The relay base can be seen here with a stainless M5 hex head bolt in the mounting hole.

 

These final pictures show the warning buzzer in place, before the instrument cluster was reinstalled.

 

The convoluted tubing, crimp terminals and most of the wiring were sourced from Vehicle Wiring Products.