Thread: strange defender ignition

My '93 Defender 200tdi recently had it's ignition key barrel die on me.
It still turns right up to starting, but it will not stay in the ON position.
I was out on a trip when I discovered this...
Luckily I had bumped a couple of wires together that were already sitting behind the dash while I was playing with the stereo wiring... and found that if I touch these two wires together, the ignition comes alive.

So I grabbed a spare switch I had in the cubby box and put the two wires together, click, solved the ignition problem til I get a new key barrel.

Yesterday I decide to have a better look at them wires to see if I can work out where all them extra wires are coming from.

In the process, I discover that the two wires that I had joined together, which I thought must have been special wires that someone had put in for a turbo timer or something, were actually just: 1 - a permanent power wire from the battery and 2 - a wire running directly to the back of the cigarette lighter power.

Just to be sure, I took this wire directly from the back of the + side of the LIGHTER OUTLET to the + Terminal of the Battery, and Click! ignition ON!

how does that work?

Surely there must be a junction in the ciggie wire that is effectively feeding the rest of the "ignition on" circuits. Effectively you are giving 12V to a subsystem (cigar lighter) of the ignition on circuit... all which are in parrallel and thus become live.

Or else you have unearthed one of the tricks of the Prince of Darkness and soon you will terminated for releasing such important classified information.

S