Thread: When did the electrics go under the seat on Defenders?

Originally Posted by lump_a_charcoal

I'm an electrician, so don't feel too bad.

Hi, would you be willing to say how many hours a non-electrician should expect to pay an auto sparky to install the Ex Box to the standard you have achieved with yours?

If not, no worries.


I have a mate who's a sparky by trade, and he rewired my classic Fiat from the headlights back to the under-dash loom, as well as replacing the wiring for the rear lights and interior lights, moving the battery to the boot and installing an aftermarket fuel pump.
This was in the middle of summer, in an uninsulted tin shed, and were all down to our daks by the end of it. I could see he was really suffering but the level of professionalism was amazing. He didn't just redo the 70's Italian spaghetti, he made it simpler, more logical and much neater. He even built a fuse panel with a secure cover that sits in the passenger footwell under the carpet - so that it could be got to easily instead of contorting upside down under the dash.

Your attention to detail reminds me of him.

Originally Posted by El Rey

Hi, would you be willing to say how many hours a non-electrician should expect to pay an auto sparky to install the Ex Box to the standard you have achieved with yours?

If not, no worries.


I have a mate who's a sparky by trade, and he rewired my classic Fiat from the headlights back to the under-dash loom, as well as replacing the wiring for the rear lights and interior lights, moving the battery to the boot and installing an aftermarket fuel pump.
This was in the middle of summer, in an uninsulted tin shed, and were all down to our daks by the end of it. I could see he was really suffering but the level of professionalism was amazing. He didn't just redo the 70's Italian spaghetti, he made it simpler, more logical and much neater. He even built a fuse panel with a secure cover that sits in the passenger footwell under the carpet - so that it could be got to easily instead of contorting upside down under the dash.

Your attention to detail reminds me of him.

I did a few hours a night, some nights a week, over the course of a few weeks, but I was doing a lot of electrical stuff all at once, which all went back to the Ex-box.
It included heated mirrors, two light bars (one on the roof), the traxide wiring upgrade as well as wiring for the compressor.
Because of all this, it took ages.
One thing that I did that I would recommend is running a multicore cable from the box to the dash. Mine is an 18 core (you can see the spare cores looped up in the pic). This means that any future switches or things can be installed, without needing to run more cables. When I finally install the dual battery setup and controller, the cable is already there for the dash switch, which uses 5 cores.

Originally Posted by lump_a_charcoal

I did a few hours a night, some nights a week, over the course of a few weeks, but I was doing a lot of electrical stuff all at once, which all went back to the Ex-box.
It included heated mirrors, two light bars (one on the roof), the traxide wiring upgrade as well as wiring for the compressor.
Because of all this, it took ages.
One thing that I did that I would recommend is running a multicore cable from the box to the dash. Mine is an 18 core (you can see the spare cores looped up in the pic). This means that any future switches or things can be installed, without needing to run more cables. When I finally install the dual battery setup and controller, the cable is already there for the dash switch, which uses 5 cores.

Suspected something of the sort. Thanks for the suggestion about the multicore cable, I'll add that to the list of upgrades. Going back for another perv at the pics in your build.