Defender Td5 instrument panel into 300tdi

[Grizzly_Adams]

Hi Folks,

The instrument panel in my trusty ol' 300tdi is starting to show it's age and instead of just doing a straight swap for a new one I've found sites describing putting a Td5 instrument panel into a 300tdi - for example Installing a Defender Td5 Instrument Pack into a 200Tdi/300Tdi - Land Rover Technical Blog

Apart from being fiddly and time consuming (anything behind the dash is!) it doesn't appear that this is a difficult job and I was wondering if anyone on here had done it?

I like the illumination on the Defender Td5 dash, it's much better than on the old tdi dash.

[rick130]

Being able to see the heater/ventilation controls would be a bonus, and the temp gauge is a non issue for me as I use a mechanical one, but is it really worth the agro ?

Are the rest of the gauges better lit and can the intensity be adjusted ? (I tend to prefer very little illumination)
I saved the page, thanks for the link

[mike_ie]

I've done it a few years back in one of the Defenders back home, and have a TD5 panel sitting waiting to drop into my own when I do a teardown later in the year.

Most of it is a pretty straightforward swap, once you've picked up the connectors you need. Speedo sensor is the only part of the system that needs new cables run, the rest is just reorganising the wires behind the dash. One thing I would do before taking out the old dash though, would be to verify the wiring for the warning light colours with a multimeter. My wiring loom colours didn't match up completely with the guide that I was following, and took a bit of figuring out. Other than that, everything worked fine.

It's a nice upgrade, takes an afternoon, and if you're running bigger tyres, you can reprogram the speedo to reflect a more accurate road speed. That part takes a bit more work, but it can be done with an eeprom programmer fairly easily.

[Grizzly_Adams]

Hi Rick,

Not sure about adjustable intensity with the illumination, just seen a few Td5 dashes at night and the instruments are much easier to see.

Mike - did you end up using one of the RoW spec looms are just chopped and changed the wires yourself?

[mike_ie]

Hi Rick,

Not sure about adjustable intensity with the illumination, just seen a few Td5 dashes at night and the instruments are much easier to see.

Mike - did you end up using one of the RoW spec looms are just chopped and changed the wires yourself?

I just chopped and changed myself - wasn't even aware of these looms existed at the time. The TD5 dash I had at the time came with the connectors still plugged in the back - wires were cut - so I just picked up a bag of pins online, crimped to the existing wiring and used the connectors that came with the dash.

There's no stock answer for dimming the dash lighting, but the dimming switches are just variable resistors. If it's a feature you really wanted, it should be just a matter of isolating what wire is used to supply power to the dash lighting, and putting a dimmer switch in series. Obviously this won't work for LED dash lighting if you've upgraded the bulbs.

[edit]Internet tells me that you need to put a dimmer switch inline on the gauge lighting feed (pin 4, should be Red/Orange)[/edit]