[NoExpert]

Yeah, their bulbs are plenty bright.

 

[NoExpert]

I currently have Osram LED interior bulbs, but I’m thinking of switching things up a little. Osram has come out with some new W5W’s that look decent and I’m considering going to new LED units from iJDM for the under door, footwell and cargo lights as well as the license plate lights. My issue with the current Osrams is the light is primarily projected out of the top. Of all the bulbs there are maybe four on the entire car that are aimed this way. The rest are wasting a lot of the light since they don’t emit great to the sides. The new bulbs are a bit pricey, but project the light in a more 180° pattern. Bright side I only need 6 bulbs for the interior lights I can’t replace with entire units. It’ll be close to $100 to make the switch, but I think it’ll be a worthwhile option.

Another item I’m looking at is a Gitank Bluetooth adapter that connects to the iPod port in the 2010/2011’s. This looks like the latest update to the Bovee/Invery setup which are typically okay.

Tomorrow I’ll be changing the rear brake pads, rotors and rebuilding the calipers. The left rear seized and wiped out the rotor. Oh well. Going Zimmerman rotors, Zimmerman rd-z ceramic pads and Frenkit complete rebuild kits. I’ll be doing the fronts with Zimmerman rotors, Zimmerman rd-z ceramic pads and Frenkit pin/spring kit a bit later. Hoping to get a bit of work done on the car this spring/summer since we may be taking a trip to Spain this autumn.

 

[NoExpert]

Assemblies arrived from AliExpress, underwhelmed is an understatement. I really had high hopes, but the emitted light is just not what I’m after. The under door/cargo/footwell lights threw yellow and purple spots while the license plate assemblies threw yellow and purple stripes. Definitely not what I was expecting, to a certain extent. One seller has quickly accepted the return, the other is going back and forth which is annoying.

I also received the Osram “street legal” W5W LED bulbs. They’re COB LED’s oriented like a filament so light is emitted to the sides better than their standard LED bulbs that emit light towards the tip and rely on a diffuser to spread the light. The color is listed as 5700k, which seems about right. They’re a bit more white/yellow than the 6000k LED bulbs I was replacing. I’m waiting for it to get a bit darker to see how the actual lighting is compared to the other bulbs.

ETA- Brightness is good and color is similar to the factory ambient lighting. I’m just going to replace all the W5W bulbs with these. They’re not cheap, but I’m pretty impressed with them so far. Oddly I prefer the color temperature as they are more gentle on the eyes.

As an additional note, the three factory overhead lights in the front are W6W. The remainder (rear overhead lights, cargo light, under door lights and footwell lights), less the glovebox, are W5W. The glovebox I believe is a W3W.

I’m also waiting for some other LED lights to arrive, but am not going to give away my plans for them till they arrive and I deem them fit for service.

 

[TheWojtek]

So, let's have an Aliexpress roundup.
My footwell (also in-door) lights:
2x przednie oświetlenie na nogi samochodu dla lądowego Range Rover Sport L320 2005-2013 Discovery 3 4 LR3 LR4 LR4 LED Dash Floor tutututututuy Lights

Can't remember if I fitted the cargo are as well or if it still rocks a W5W LED.

License plate lights (they were tough to install, by a millimeter larger than expected):
2Pcs White LED Car Number License Plate Lights Lamps For Land Range Rover Sport L320 Discovery 3 4 LR3 LR4 Freelander 2 LR2 12V

Very satisfied with all of the above, no light discoloration, very bright.
For the interior overhead lights I used a local car light and LED store, they picked the right set and it does look good as well, same temperature as the footwell lights so does make sense visually.

 

[NoExpert]

I got the same door/footwell/cargo lights, they put out the yellow/purple dots.

This is just aiming one at the inner D pillar, you can see the pattern on it.

I got the other license plate lights with the three LED’s in each. Not going to bother trying more. I had gotten some other LED bulbs from AE that had the same lighting effect of purple and yellow so it’s something with their LED quality or possibly something with the LED light on the lens and it separating the colors. Just odd the past and current Osram bulbs didn’t have this issue. Maybe the solo light source opposed to multiple LED’s? The reverse lights also show no signs of multiple colors either though, just pure white.

I finally threw in the towel with the second seller regarding the lights and handed it off to AliExpress to handle. Magically the return was processed immediately with no further questions and money is being refunded. I will admit my parting shot at the seller was to check their own 90 day no hassle free return policy which did not require a reason to return an item as they were saying.

One last observation; since adding the one way valve for the secondary turbo boost pipe I’ve noticed my idle being smoother and more stable. Could be something, could be nothing.

 

[NoExpert]

The new Osram W5W LED’s:

Previous Osram W5W LED’s:

They definitely put out a more full light since more light is pumped into the reflectors and is emitted to the sides. Will replace them all with these.

 

[TheWojtek]

Looks great although you cheat with your custom rear lights turning on when the doors opens...

 

[NoExpert]

Looks great although you cheat with your custom rear lights turning on when the doors opens...

I still have the diodes, although I need to pick up some more wire and sealant heat shrink, but we gotta get yours done this year.

Today I finally got around to installing the aluminum coolant outlet and Nissens coolant reservoir. No more low coolant warning on the dash, at last. The aluminum outlet fit perfect with no issues. Oddly the o ring for the oil cooler to coolant outlet had been snagged and was torn. Fortunately I had new genuine coolant outlet seals and an o ring for the new outlet so that all got replaced. Also found the large o ring on the throttle body had a pretty big tear in it. Got lucky that I just replaced these seals on a 2011 Disco 4 this week so I put in that used one for now since at least it doesn’t have a big tear in it. The Nissens reservoir came with a new cap, but it’s 110 kpa and my car takes a 140 kpa. I swapped the new seal to my old 140 kpa cap and put that on. Got the system preliminarily bled, but I’m sure it’ll be low tomorrow as it all settles in. Overall a productive bit of time.

 

[NoExpert]

This afternoon after the dust settled at work I took a few minutes to fiddle with the car again. Replaced the O ring for the secondary boost hose fitting since I noticed it wasn’t a stellar fit. Old O ring split when I tried to remove it and was hard. You can see the one way valve/hose I added in this pic.

After that I topped up the coolant level and poked around looking for any leaks. Cleaned up a few areas to check for potential oil seepage/leaks then onto other things.
Next I thought I’d check just how far off the volt meters I installed are. Rather surprising results.

Last I decided to take a look at the BCM fuses for I have no idea what reason other than I never really have. Found one fuse that shows 10A on the glovebox diagram and had a 15A fuse in it so swapped that out. Not sure if this is right though since now looking at my handbook it shows 15A, confusing. Then found a 30A fuse in the F8 position which should be empty on my car. This completely baffled me as it has contacts, so curious what this was potentially powering. I think on older models this takes a 30A fuse for trailer power, but mine has a different fuse for this (F48 to be precise). I’ve removed it and haven’t seen any adverse effects so will be leaving that out. I did check my trailer socket with a trailer simulator unit and everything is working fine (parking lights, brake lights, reverse lights, rear fog lights, turn signals, constant power and switched power).
Another rather productive bit of time on the car.

 

[NoExpert]

Where to begin… it was oil change time, decided to try LiquiMoly TopTech 5w30 ACEA C4 in the car just because. Got a Mahle oil filter, Hengst air filter and Mahle CareMetix cabin filter since they were all overdue. Also had a Stahlbus drain valve kicking around to put in it. Started off okay, backed off the oil filter cap, removed the drain plug, oil everywhere as it hit the frame, etc. after draining a bit I pulled the oil filter out and gave it a visual finding a black object in one of the pleats. Get it out and drop it several times as it’s very small. Finally get a look at it and realize it’s the d@mn oil drain stopper for the oil cooler! How long it’s been out, don’t know. Just know this is a problem. So set about trying to get it back in. As it’s finally going in the tab on the stopper tears off. Fantastic. Now I need to find a way to plug the oil drain for the time being. So the boss and I search the shop and find something sketchy, but will probably work. Rig it all up and cross my fingers. Then back under the car to put in the Stahlbus valve. Thank goodness this went smooth. Threaded in, torqued, tested, cap on, done. Now I don’t have to remove the skid plate if I don’t feel like it.

I dump the six liters in the oil filler, check level, all good. Reset the service interval counter and oil service. Also contacted Nissens to see if they’ll do anything about the oil cooler plug. In the meantime I found a better designed silicone stopper and ordered a few to try fitting. They’re 2mm larger diameter, 0.5mm thicker, have a barbed retaining end rather than a flat flap to pull through the hole in the arm and hopefully do the trick. Even if Nissens sends a replacement oil cooler I’ll probably still swap the stopper to the ones I ordered just to avoid this in the future.

Then I decided to be brave and wander into the CCF. Started with setting all my tire settings back to stock for now. Realistically I need a day to dive into this since it’s a tedious process of trial and error. Next I saw some settings that caught my eye and just make sense to change. There is a setting for low oil warning, stock it’s set to the oil pressure sensor with the oil level sensor as an option. Switched this to oil level sensor then the next setting was when the warning kicked in, stock was “13” but don’t ask what that means as the engine capacity is nowhere near that nor is it an option in the drop down. In the drop down I opted for the warning to come on at 1 liter low (the smallest option). The oil pressure warning is also still enabled, so now oil pressure is monitored as is the oil level. I mean what’s the point of the in dash oil level if it’s not actually going to warn you if the oil level is low?
We had an L322 4.4 TDV8 with a cooked engine a while back, it had 3.75 of 9 liters of oil in the engine, but was somehow making enough oil pressure to not give a warning. Had it been setup how I just setup mine the engine probably wouldn’t have been cooked since the owner would have got a warning about the oil being low prior to doing damage.

Still have another small project I’m trying to work on in the background. Some recent circumstances have set me back a bit so things are slow with the car. Hopefully next week I’ll start making a little progress on the new project and then make a similar setup for TheWojtek (unless he wants to go all in).

 

[NoExpert]

Finally got around to installing the roof rails. They weren’t that bad to do, but not exactly done at the moment. Need to do as @TheWojtek suggested and screw the tips to the channel from underneath since I can see that being a problem later, that’s minor though. I didn’t follow the instructions, instead of drilling massive 19mm holes I screwed a 6mm bolt with a spacer through the channel and into each hole and scribed around the spacers. This let me cut out exactly what I needed to and forego using the plastic retaining washers as the spacers were kept in place by the channels. I need to do some cleaning up and replace the clips, but for now they’re in place.

Curious, do 10-13’s only use four clips in the channels? That’s what mine have, but the parts system I use listed 12 which seems like for an 05-09 that don’t use the six push in fir tree clips.

 

[NoExpert]

Been a rough few weeks. Did an oil change and realized my oil cooler is having issues so will need to address that. The oil filter cap is warped and dumping oil which is annoying. Also some internals are deteriorating. Trying to figure out what brand to go with now since this one is Nissens and I’m severely underwhelmed with it and their after sales support.

Last week another car clipped my mirror while going through a curve. He ran a bit wide and I was fairly tight to the line. It destroyed the driver’s mirror and door glass, which is surprisingly laminated. For now I dropped in the standard hardened glass from an 05-09 and pieced my mirror back together. I could have gone the insurance route, but this was faster and the least inconvenient for me. Changing the front door glass is pretty painless to do so I can always get the laminated glass later cheaper and swap it.

In the process of having the door panels off I decided to rework the resistors for the front under door lights. Started good, till the wire snapped off the driver’s side resistor. I was a bit nervous about this happening and trying to be careful, oh well. For now I threw an incandescent back in and I’ll deal with fixing it later. I mainly wanted to ditch the crap splice connectors, move the resistors further up the wiring and more inline to streamline it a bit more. Think I’ll be putting heat shrink over each end to reinforce the resistor wires better.

 

[NoExpert]

New resistors are in, much better setup.

 

[NoExpert]

Time for a roof rail recap…
Started with getting some used genuine roof rails and Thule AeroWing cross bars for free. I had to think about installing them for a bit, then started acquiring the small missing/damaged bits, this is where it got annoying. Ordered ten new screw caps (minimum amount I could order). They got lost with the shipper with no reprisal so I was out the cost of them and had to order another ten, this took around two months since they were coming from the UK and the shop had to get them from Land Rover. Next ordered some 3M VHB tape locally which arrived quickly. Finally got around to installing them, I altered the install instructions by only opening up the holes for the screws just slightly more than the spacers. Making 19mm holes just seemed excessive to me when 14mm sufficed. Two of the clips were broken on the channel covers and one had been glued. I put everything together and ordered new clips. Mine had four clips, one at each end. I found a place in Germany with seven in stock so I ordered all seven. I wanted to put two at each front and one at each rear and one for a spare. After a couple weeks of waiting I get notified they shipped to another customer by mistake and that he will be shipping them to me. A couple more weeks and they finally get sent to me. A couple weeks after that they finally arrive. This morning I pulled the rails and covers off to get it all together. I started with drilling the covers and putting screws from underneath into the plastic ends where the VHB is since the VHB wasn’t able to grab the 14 year old rubberized channel covers. This addressed the tips having a little movement in them as they’re now nice and solid. Then I pried the clips off the covers and put in the six new clips. The left front cover/clip had been glued to the mount point and got a little tweaked when I initially removed it. After some fine tuning I got the cover back to a solid fit when clipped in. Bolted them all down, clipped in, screw covers in and ready to go nice and solid to the car. The last bit will be a couple end caps for the cross bars, but no rush for that.

Next item on the agenda will be some new wiring for the rear lights and some extra stuff I’ll share when it’s all done. I’ve come up with a better way to add the diodes and make it a cleaner install. I’m also going to try some different diodes with a lower voltage drop. If my plans work I may put together a few plug and play kits if enough people are interested.

 

[NoExpert]

Finally got around to rewiring my rear lights and adding some additional cargo lights ala L494 style. Went with a PnP setup, made a pigtail using factory style pins/plugs that goes between the cargo light and factory wiring. This new wiring (used purple and black factory colors then made a twisted pair out of them) runs up the right rear pillar with a positive/purple leg going to the right rear passenger light, then the twisted pair drops into the main rear tailgate with a positive/purple leg going to the left rear passenger light. The dropped in pair runs down to the lower area where I installed two small LED lights also using the factory style pins/plugs that will shine from overhead on the cargo area. They are a little bit of a spot light, so have to wait till tonight to see how they do. Hoping they’re high enough up that they spread a bit. I’m planning to use these same units to add approach lighting to the side mirrors since they’re sealed aluminum housings and quite small.

I had to drill two 1” holes to fit the lights, a butterfly bit from the back made it easy work. Once through I cut an X in the carpet and pushed the new lights into place. Initially I wanted them to be higher up, but when I spotted two mould marks on the plastic in the exact same place on either side it made it too easy. They landed about halfway down the carpeted area. Turned out pretty nice.

The new diode setup in the rear passenger lights makes them behave like the factory should have made them (added a third pin in the lights). I just had to crimp a pin on the new positive leg and fit it into the existing plugs. Then plug them in and they worked as they should have from the factory.

Last bit, I stuffed some acoustic batting behind the subwoofer. This may or may not help with some of the vibrations I get, will see how it goes.

With all this wiring and little bits of soldering I only managed to blow the fuse once and trip the BCM. Had to pull the battery terminals off and touch them to each other for a reset, then back in action. Of course I blew the fuse last night trying to work in the dark and accidentally cut the positive and neutral while plugged in, oops. Called it a night at that point and got it back to life in the morning to finish it up. All in I think it took about six hours, but that’s manually twisting the wire, soldering and heat shrinking joints, crimping connectors, running wire, etc.

ETA:
Also jumped the rear seat and cargo area power socket relay so they’re always live. Now I can pop the tailgate open and use the power socket whenever.

Some poor preliminary pics of the lights, need it to get a bit darker here for good pics.

ETAM
Got a bit darker, but contending with a street light as well. Overall I’m really happy with the upgrade. Almost zero shadow when leaning into the rear end. The parcel shelf casts a shadow, but not bad. Also lights up the back of the car and the ground so definitely spreading the light out. No flash was used for any of the pics. I also like that you can’t see the lights from behind, just the illumination.

 

[NoExpert]

Here’s a stock setup vs updated setup pic, again, our street lighting kind of gets in the way.

 

[Rozer]

Looks great. Much improved lighting. Love how you are keen to tackle the wiring, I'm fine with mechanical stuff, but struggle with Electrics, my L320 won't start after engine rebuild only fault coming up is EPB and struggling to fix it

 

[NoExpert]

That bit of electrical is seriously a cake walk. The hardest part was finding and implementing a clean way to add the diodes as well as a third pin to the stock light housings. After that it was just twisting wires, crimping pins, soldering splice joints and shrinking heat shrink. Nothing exciting.

 

[NoExpert]

Don’t think I’ve fully covered this, but if you’re after constant power to the power sockets all you need to do is make up one or two jumpers (short, 1.5mm/16AWG or larger wire with spade terminals on each end), remove one or two relays and install the jumpers. The larger R1 (upper) relay is for the back seat and cargo area sockets while the smaller R3 (lower) relay is for the front seat socket. The smaller R3 relay slots that need to be jumped are parallel while the larger R1 relay slots that need to be jumped are perpendicular. The relays are a pain to remove and the wires can be fiddly to get in, but if you prefer constantly live sockets it’s worth the few minutes of work. They’re still fuse protected and 1.5mm/16AWG is the minimum for 20 amp DC. You can of course go larger, but definitely not smaller.

 

[NoExpert]

Anybody ever root through their CJB fuses and pull fuses so it matches the user manual? I just did this cause, well, not much else going on at the moment.

The above picture in the previous post is as I got the car.
The following picture is as the user manual shows:

I pulled out four fuses in total. When I checked all the blank fuses in the wiring diagram they showed as not used or terminated at one of the main CJB connectors. Not that it’s of any real importance, just interesting to see the discrepancy between the online user manual and the glovebox fuse diagram. There’s also one fuse (F3) in the online manual that’s 15a (what was in my car) while the glovebox shows 10a.

I also noticed the 05-09 CJB fuse diagram is quite different to the 10-13 CJB fuse diagram.

Anyway, that’s enough useless info for now.