Freelander 1 5 door front courtesy light and MGF mirror into 3 door

So, I've just finished this little project, I had the headlining down to wire in a new roof mounted amplified antenna in the original position, so took the opportunity to run some more wiring tothe front of the headlining between the sun roofs and the top of the windscreen for additional forward lighting in the cabin. This wiring is connected to the original Central courtesy lamp wiring and runs along the centre of the roof, to the top of the right hand B pillar, then along the top of the right hand door frame. The original wiring runs down the Right hand A pillar, and goes behind the dashboard, my new wiring turns left and continues along the underside of the roof then aloing the thin section between the sunroofs and windscreen.

On the courtesy lamps there are two wires, the Courtesy lamp earths through its body, the Purple wire is a constant live, and the Purple and White wire is a switched live controlled by the CCU. The switches this purple / white to earth when the door switch activates, and the CCU pulses this line using PWM to do the dimming of the courtesy lights. By variating the voltage on thepurple/white lines the CCU creates a potential difference across the purple and purple/white lines, its this differing, reducing, voltage that dims the brightness of the courtesy light. The voltages re modulated something like this:



So I started with dropping the headlining, and cutting chunks out of it to allow the new lamp assembly room to go into it, I also cut some of the clips off the back of the lamp to save me having to cut slots in the headlining for them. Eventually the fitted into each other:




After that I fitted a couple of rivnuts to the headlining to secure the lamp to, and I noticed a problem, the original "sunglasses pocket" was going to interfere with the lamp:


Cue some "plastic surgery" with a hack saw:

And the little Aluminium plate on the left was cut to the profile of the pocket with aviation snips.

This was then quickly wrapped in carbon vinyl & bonded to the back of the "pocket":


So those parts are now ready for reassembly, but I'm not done yet...

So next on the list of upgrades was an MGF rear view mirror, which has two little lights on the underside of its body. First step with them was to extend the wiring:


Then I sheathed the extended wiring loom:

Then I refitted the headlining and poked all 5 wires through the hole in the headlining shown in the previous post.

I then trilled the underside of the doubble skinned bracing at the windscreen top and put a new earthpoint there with a self tapper screw into an eyelet crimp terminal, which had two wires with insulated female spades on them, one for each of the earths from the mirror and the 5 door lamp. Then it was simply connet the 3 wires each from the mirror, the 5 door lamp and the vechicles extended courtesy light wiring loom, which I did with insulated female spades on the vehicle "supply" wiring and male spades on the "consumer" wiring from the lamp and mirror. The result?

All the lights, including the original centre courtesy light, are fitted with colour matched white LED's, the map lights on the mirror and spotlights in the 5 door lamp are fitted with capsule/snotter/w5w bulbs, the front central light and the original central light are festoon bulbs. These were sourced from eBay, and these specific w5w leds are very bright and emite a very pure white light:


£4.65 for ten LED "bulbs" delivered: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/123785201623

Their advert's picture does accurately portray the colour and luminosity of the light emitted from those bulbs:


Forgot to say, those particular LEDs work beautifully in this applicaiton in the door courtesy light map lights position as the LED itself is exactly centred on the lens of the map lights, some of the other LED's I tried were either too far back, or overshot the lens.

The main festoon bulb lamp's in the centre position of the forward light and the original centre light got fitted with LED panel's sourced from ebay:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/352648147693


I've soldered two of the female tales to the festoon bulb holder in the original centre light, and cut a little plate of sheet metal to stick two of these panels to, and the LED panels side by side more or less fill the original centre courtesy light's lens with LEDS. The central lamp in the 5 door courtesy light at the front of the vehicle got one of these panels. Again, these do actually live up to the brightness and colour temperature suggested by the pictures in the advert on eBay, and they do happen to be a bloody good match to the w5w leds mentioned earlier. It is often the case that these LED's are either more of a "warm white" (mild yellow tinge) or too "cool white" (blue tinge) but both these specific items are as white as white can be, and they match.

The result is another silly little upgrade done in my ubiquitous "OE+" style, where I aim for things I do to look as neat as original equipment, just better quality / performance. I know I keep banging on about the colours matching, but the fact these leds all match colour, really makes it look like a modern quality vehicle's original equipment rather than botched together chinese junk. I do have to admit, the interior of the freelander is now stupidly brightly illuminated now.

Just doing one of these upgrades, either replaceing the w5w's & festoons in a 5 door with the LEDs I've suggested, as in linked to in poasts above, or replacing the one festoon in a three door with two of these panels, will give you a very well lit cabin in your freelander. I've gone the extra mile to put map lights at the front so anyone in the passenger seat can use the map lights to see what they are doing without over illuminating the cabin.