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I might as well be writting a Haynes worksop manual! No more tonight folks

Excellent, well done

Wish I had thought of cable ties.

You can pay yourself £500 quid now.

Hi, thanks. There is a few typos in the script that I'll have to correct. I blame it on the time of night!

As for the cable ties securing the screen, yes it was a difficult one. I didn't want to glue it and although I had an original metal holder for the LR satnav, this unit is slightly different. The best way was to utilise the mounting hole at the bottom of the rear of the screen and place the supplied dash mount toggle onto the rear slide recess after having drilled a couple of small holes in this mount that would allow the cable tie to pass. Then there are holes in the dash that arn't used. You then merely pass the tie thro' them and tighten up. It holds perfectly and will stand hard pressing. The beauty of it is you can remove the unit by cutting the ties if need be and reconnect without any trouble.

Whilst there wasn't a difficulty putting the screen in the dash hole, I did trim the small bits of black plastic on the inside of the dash where the screen goes. This was simply to ensure a snug fit and ensure that the control buttons didn't inadvertantly activate. All it took was a few minuets and a Stanley Knife.

Yes, thats what a LR dealer wanted to charge me £500 plus VAT. My dislike for parting with money and me knowing that no matter how good they were, they wouldn't take as much care with it as I would prompted me to do it. I put my other vehicle into the dealer for a water leak last week and when I got it back, had to T cut the rear door because they had marked it. I could have taken it back, but it would have been punch and judy - oh yes you did, oh no I didn't.

Great work there

I have made it a sticky topic and added that it includes a guide to installation

I'm sure the other members will benefit from your had work

also altered your photos so they show in the forum for easy viewing pleasure  Former Mod/Member, with the most post & Chicken George Arch nemesis

Thanks npinks, I try! The guide is a work in progress. It's handy no matter if you go for a Kenwood or something else. The principals are the same. I'll perfect it and maybe add some more pics or at least ones of better quality. An iPhone has it's limitations. The work isn't beyond anyone to be honest. The major worry for me was the wiring, but once you have that sussed, it's a breeze. If you think about it, by wiring into the aux socket wiring, if anything goes wrong, it's just the aux sockets you loose not the whole car, but in any case the in line fuses in the satnav equipment are of a lower amp value, so would blow first. The way it's installed, it's a 10 second job to change them or isolate it if you want. The satnav units themselves do not emit any noicable heat, which is always a worry and there doesn't appear to be any battery drain, another possible worry.

10x!
awesome!

if you could place a comment after each picture would be great!
but nevertheless awesome!

Yep, will try. I did finish a complete installation guide, but then when I went to post it, after being logged in, it insisted I should log in again and I lost the lot! Deep depression. I must do some chores before her indoors comes home and asks me what I've done with my day. She thinks the Forum is for sad people - says a lot for me, and maybe do it in chapters later on so I don't risk flushing the lot down the toilet again.

Carnoch if you do it as either an MSword file or create the final version as a PDF document you can still save it to your gallery for everybody to download How can carbon have a footprint, it has no feet?
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Hi Tim, cheers, might try that. It is possible I just pressed the wrong button. I have a Laptop in the kitchen on pretty much constantly. It's nice and handy when passing thro', but easy enough for people to drop a pack of Fig Rolls on etc. The wife thinks thats sad too! The laptop on, not the Fig Rolls, which make you regular evidently.

NP I don't this should be a sticky in here, but instead Carnoch should create his guide and then it should be posted in the Tips and tricks section and then locked.

I had hoped that was what the tips and tricks section was going to be, i.e. an area for mods to put items that would be locked and saved for all to easily view and use......forever and ever

Either way good job Carnoch and glad you could find the time to provide a great contribution to the forum  Once you've tasted GREY you'll never go back!

Okay, you have done the hard bit, there is no more taking apart of your beloved Freelander. By now you are possibly close to suicide and questioning your sanity for having started it.

The satnav unit comes in three bits.

The touch screen monitor,

The touch screen control box. a metal box abot 3"x4"x1",

The sat nav unit, a plastic box measuring roughly the same.

Then there is all the wires to connect.

The monitor simply connects from the control box to the touch screen via a large black cable. It is quite big in diameter with a unique looking oblong connector and pins both ends. It feeds the screen with picture and power without the need for anything extra. lovely and simple.

The touch screen control box is metal. It has three connectors, that large wire as above, a cable that connects to the sat nav and a multi plug with four wires. The red wire is a 5a in line fused ignition cable, the black simply a ground wire, the purple/white a sensor cable that is only connected should you wish to put a camera in the boot to help you reverse and a light green parking sensor cable, which is another wire you don't really need. If connected to the handbrake and you have a DVD unit installed, it ensures you can't watch Star Wars whilst driving down the M1. Yes, I know it's tempting!

The satnav unit as I said is plastic. It has a socket for the GPS ariel and a multi plug including a block connector with wires and a round pin multi lead. The block connector has four wires, a light green handbrake wire, a black earth wire, a red ignition wire and a yellow battery wire.The multi lead goes to the touch screen control unit.

Now there are tones of wires. You won't need the full length of any of them, but either coil up any excess and tie it off or cut, but only when you are satisfied everything is working and where you want it.

Talking of which, now have a look at touch screen monitor, in a previous post I described where to fit it and how. The pics show how I did this. It's simplistic. Hopefully, unless you want me to repeat it, I'll take it the previous post is okay.

Now, you have the touch screen control unit and the satnav unit to place. Space is limited in a Freelander. The units should be sited flat is at all possible. I did consider the boot, but opted for under the drivers seat for ease of instsallation.

I placed the touch screen control unit to the left, the satnav unit to the right. It wedged nicely between the recess in the rear passenger compartment and the plastic, inclined blower tubes. There is some flexibility in those blower tubes, they san be move up and inch or so to make like easy, then pushed down again without dislodging anything.

The units come with screws and velcro to fix the units in one place, but to be honest it's not needed and not something I'd do until I'd finished and was totally happy with where everything was and even then I'd use the velcro and not the screws.

Fine, you have all the bits and stripped down the dash and centre console. What do I do with the wires.

See the next post in case I loose it.

Right, lets start with the,

Satnav GPS cable - place the head of it - the large bit with a sticky pad, in a small recess to the front of the windscreen in the vacant speaker hole on the dash. It's fine there, excellent signal even with a heated screen. It doesn't show and you don't need to install a 'shark fin' ariel unless you want to pull the roof lining out and drill the roof, other than for pose value, who cares? Get a fake one if you like, you know a stick on affair on sale on Ebay.

Feed the wire down thro' dash, taking care to avoid any areas of potential contact, past the heater control space and there are a couple of factory holes you can feed the cable thro' and into hole where the gear stick is. Once there look to the right of the gear stick and you will see an oblong hole cut in the carpet and under felt. It is not used. Push the cable towards the back seat as far as you can. Then go to the rear seat, shove your hand under the seat and using a torch look to the left of the blower tubes. You will see the carpet has been cut away and if you push your hand up there towards the centre console, you will feel the cable. Merely pull it thro' ensuring you leave enough cable both ends.

Do the same with the monitor cable from the control unit to the monitor.

You don't need any other cables to go to the dash.

That apart, you still have four wires from the control unit and four wires from the satnav unit to connect. The other wires just interconnect between the control box and the satnav, which are sitting side by side.

Right, Take the control box unit wires. Tie off the purple/white one and the light green one making sure the ends are insulated. We won't use them. This leaves the red ignition cable and the black earth cable.

Take two of your blue snap cable connectors and splice the red and black wires respectively into the corresponding cable colours of the satnav unit. Do it after the in line 2a fuse in the satnav red ignition cable as the one your putting on is 5a. Thats taken care of the control box wiring.

You now have four wires from the satnav left. A red ignition one, a yellow battery one, a black ground one and a light green handbrake one. The green one you don't really need, but if you are wanting to use some more advanced functions on the satnav, like travelling time/distance, stopped time, you'll need to connect it. either tie it off or it's easy enough to connect up.

Feed these four wires exactly the same way as your other cables. Pull out 2'-3' of these wires from the gear stick hole.

Quick break, back soon.

Fine, you have the four wires, where do you feed them to?

You have a choice, either splice them into both the aux sockets or do what I did.

Feed the wires down the left hand side of the centre console and out the back of the rear coin holder area. Don't try to do it on the right hand side, the wiring may get caught in the handbrake mechanism.

The wire to start with is then the black ground wire. Fix this to one of the four bolt heads that protrude from the floor pan. All you need is to fix or solder it to a flat washer and get a sutiable nut to pop on top. That way you haven't disturbed the handbrake bolts.

Next, the green wire, if you have decided you want it. Using a blue electrical snap connector, link it into the clearly visable handrake on wire, which is clearly visable from this point and can't be missed. It connects to a small switch at the bottom of the handbrake ratchet. As with all snap connector, make sure you apply some insulating tape round it, in case the snap thing decides to ping open at some point.

Okay, you are left with two wires, the red ignition wire and the yellow battery wire.

Now think about it, the front aux socket is only on if you activate the ignition, therefore you want to cut it into this positive wire. The rear aux socket on the other hand is continually on and isn't dependant on the ignition, that makes it perfect for the yellow battery wire.

You will locate the wires for these sockets in the multi connector to the left of the rear coin hole when viewing it from the passenger eat.

Disconnect this connector, another push clip thing, and pull it towards you. It only has a couple in inches slack.

Find the thicker brown and red wire. It's on the outer edge of the multi block. This is the battery wire and the one you'll connect to the yellow satnav wire.

Find the thick yellow wire. It's at the other end of the multi block, again on an edge. This is your ignition switched positive. The one you will connect to the red satnav wire.

Yes, I know it sounds funny, but it's right.

Use a larger yellow snap connector for this job. Thats because the thicker wires require it or you will chop the car wires in half if you use a smaller blue one. That gives you a slight problem. The satnav wires are of a smaller diameter. They won't make contact in the snap block, so either adapt them or using a solder iron, solder them in first, then offer them up to the bigger wires and using a pair of pliers, close them tightly, insulating tape to secure the snap connector.

Thats basically it, I'd test the unit by switching the ignition on without running the car. If there is a problem and there shouldn't be, it's easier to connect, rather than dismantle again. The main things that could go skew whiff are the ground or any of your wires not making a proper connection.

The satnav should fire up automatically, it's all touch screen after that. It will turn off automatically once the vehicle is stopped. Yes, you can muck about with the settings to let it do different things. The hard disc memory is maintained by the battery wire. It hardly consumes any current and you will not wake up and find your vehicle's battery flat. I looked at the stats and the current is point zero, zero whatever. The units don't get even warm when in operation, yes the screen does get slightly warm, but then colour touch screens do. It's in their nature.

Update of the maps or operating system of the satnav's hard disc is by USB mini connector to a laptop or by SD card.

The excess wire to the GPS ariel I coiled up and used plastic ties to make neat, likewise the monitor wire. There is plenty of space behind the satnav monitor to hide them. You can even put the GPS cable into the natural gap between the heater blowers near the top speaker unit. I prefer it that way, so if I have to take the dash apart again, it's easy to get some slack cable.

The monitor control unit will take another two AV in's and one AV out via phono plugs. Therefore you can add to this system, for instance a DVD player, rear camera monitor etc. The combinations are endless. You can add radio or bluetooth too.

The 702 monitor can also be installed into a supplied plastic box, bit like an electric backing box you put into plaster board and cut into the rear of the front head rests for DVD monitors for the kids. Granted you'd have to feed the wires down the side of the front seats, but it can't be that difficult.

As for the location of the monitor control box and satnav unit under the seats. I've checked and they will withstand tolerances of humidty and temprerature, so I can't see a problem with their location. Remember you can tuck spare cable away under the carpet, under the seat.

After you have completed that, the refit of the centre console and dash is a simple reversal of the removal process. Try not to loose screws down where the gearstick goes. I almost did and sods law it wanted to go down where I'd put the cable.

If I think of anything else or notice something I've forgotten, I will amend the post. Good luck

Once again, Carnoch....awesome work!
If you can post better pictures will be perfect!
10x!

Hi, no problem, i'll refine it over the next week, make it easier to read, expand anything that needs it and add some captions to the photos. I was busy today and will be tomorrow, so sometime after that. I really do recommend this combination, it is awsome.