Hiding the Cables

The central lock mechanism for the two front doors works great! Except that until yesterday I had all the cables spread either on the dashboard or in the foot area. Which did not look very appealing nor was it safe to have those cables near the foot pedals, where they could get stuck or my feet could get entangled.

During this week, I did make several attempts to affix these cables somehow beneath the dashboard. I was able to find a place where I could screw on the control box, though with one screw only. I tried then to affix the cables with isolating tape. However, the tape did not stick anywhere on the dashboard plastic. I got black Duck Tape. The extra strong version. But neither this tape was able to get attached anywhere! It appears that Peugeot has coated every plastic surface with a kind of Teflon anti-stick coating, so that no dirt would get stuck. I was not able to find any place where the tape would hold. So the only choice for affixing anything would have to be mechanical. Fortunately I found a few holes and loops under the dashboard where I could wind the sticky tape through - and then I was able to wrap it around the central locking cables and let them hang from these fixtures. I did this along the underside of the dashboard from right to left, and so the cables for the central locking system are now hidden.

The final challenge was to get somewhere an access to a +12V connection from the battery. The obvious option was the cigarette lighter, which I had used temporarily with a plug until now. In contrast to many other vehicles, this lighter is powered even if the ignition is off. I tried to pull the lighter out, but it was affixed in a very non-obvious way - I was not able to get it out from the dashboard. So I had to look for other choices. The fuse box behind the glove compartment would be an option to get some electric power, but there appeared no usable slot nor any +12V cable that I could easily use. All is tightly packed, with sealed cable trees and snug sitting plugs. Another possibility would be the radio. I took it out and was able to connect a cable to the +12V "memory" input line, which was constantly powered even when the ignition was off. Now I had to find a way to get the cable from the radio down to the central locking control box. This was again quite difficult: the whole dashboard appears to be very tightly packed. No free space behind it. And the panels cannot be dismantled in any obvious way: I saw a few screws here and there, but when I unscrewed them, then there were a few more hidden screws which kept everything still together. A real nightmare! And I was not willing to dismantle all the parts of the dashboard just for getting one single cable through. Finally I found a duct at the left side of the radio. I pushed the cable through, and indeed it arrived below in the passenger foot area. Now just attaching the final connection, and the central locking is now functioning, with all the cabling hidden.

Planning the Electrical Circuits

Mr.Percy has already a functioning electric system. There is a reasonable leisure battery with 110 Ah capacity, and it is connected through a TEC3M relay to the main battery. The seller had already demonstrated the water pump, which worked fine. There are also two 12V ceiling lights, but only one of them is working. Upon closer inspection I noticed that the wiring for the second light is not connected. These lights give not a very pleasant light, and they probably use a lot of power. Therefore I decided that I would put LED lighting in the vehicle.

Maplin had a set of LED strip lights on sale, so I got three of them, including the extension. Each of those would use a total of 2 A at 12 V, which would actually be quite significant. But I tried and ran them at 9V only, and this worked fine, reducing the power requirements by approximately half.

The cabling appears not to have been done very professionally. In my opinion, the cable width is far too low; one would need good thick cables to avoid voltage drops. I am planning to redo most of the electric wiring, once I have some more time.

eBay has a lot of vendors which sell very interesting devices: combined volt/-amperemeter, voltage stabilisors, thermometers, etc. I purchased a few things, many of them quite cheap from Hongkong, Taiwan, Singapore, and China.