Remote Centraldoor locking for your MK3 Interceptor Sir?
By Kerry Moore, Steve Payne, and ChrisMiller,
Also Known As “The Jensen Monday Club”
Spoiled by the luxury of remote centraldoor locking on your modern car? Is going back to having to unlock the dooryourself a real culture shock? Then read on and find out how to give your MK3some mod cons.
Along with fellow MK3 owners, Steve Payneand Chris Miller, we have formed the “Jensen Monday club”, and as often as wecan all take a Monday off work, we meet to pool expertise and resources, andundertake projects on our cars.
You may have read the recent article on thereplacement of the front suspension bushes on my car, and in the near future wehope to have articles on cam swops, steering rack replacement, and radiatorrepairs.
This article is about the installation ofkeyless remote central locking. At first this may sound like a complex job todo on a 30 year old car, but for the princely sum of £104.87, and about 2 hourswork, the competent home mechanic/electrician can complete the job a lot easierthan you might think.
The job is made easier by the fact that theMK3 comes with central locking on the passenger door as standard. This meansthat almost half the wiring and parts are already fitted. All that remains foryou to do is add the solenoids to the driver’s door (which do the locking) and aremote control unit.
Parts Required
As Jensen already fitted central locking tothe passenger door, you only need to add the mechanical locking equipment tothe driver’s door. The whole package of solenoids, brackets, and rods can beordered second hand from any of the Jensen parts dealers. I had mine from RejenClassics (Tel 01962 777400), for £39.91, including VAT and postage.
The next part you will require is a bracketto mount them on. The mounting brackets are not the same for the drivers andpassenger doors, so you will the bracket to suit.
If you are fitting them to a right-handdrive UK driver’s door, you will need a bracket from a European or US passengerdoor, which is available from Martin Robey’s (Tel 024 7638 6903), part number #75376(the bracket is £14.97, including VAT and postage)
If you are doing this on a left-hand drive Europeanor US car, you will need a UK passenger door bracket, Robey’s part number #75377(if you are ordering the solenoids from a UK supplier, you may find that thebracket that comes with them will be from a UK passenger door, so it will bethe correct one for your driver’s door).
The remote control unit is available fromMaplin Electronics (www.maplin.co.uk),part number Micro Scan SCL 3000. This comes with the key fob remote, andthe control unit and wiring (priced at £49.99, including VAT and postage).
The final parts you will require are 2diodes capable of taking approximately 2 amps at 12V. You will need these ifyou wish to make the cars indicators flash when the unit is activated. Thesecan also be ordered from Maplin.
Fitting.
As with any wiring job, disconnect thebattery BEFORE you start, and make sure all your connections are correct andnot liable to short circuit before you reconnect it.
It is good practice to test all circuitsbefore final connections are made.
First remove the driver’s door card. Thiswill require the removal of the chrome edging strips, the door handle, and thedoor-locking knob. As you remove the door card, carefully remove the wiringfrom the door-locking switch. The next step is to find a location to mount thecontrol unit. Fortunately this is very small (about the same size a cigarettepacket), and can be easily mounted, just ensuring the window lowering mechanismdoesn’t catch on it.
Picture 1: RHD Passenger Door Solenoids Transferred from Their OriginalBracket (bottom) Onto a LHD Passenger Door Bracket (top).
Once the unit is mounted, the bracket canbe fixed. On my car, there were already holes for the bracket drilled in thedoorframe, it was just a matter of drilling them out to suit the size offixings to be used (don’t use fixings with to large a head, as you won’t beable to get the door card back on if they stick out to much).
Once fixed, the rod from the solenoids canbe attached to the door handle (Kerry: should this be “door locking rod”not “door handle mechanism” ?) mechanism. Ensure this can slide side toside smoothly.
Wiring
After fixing the control unit, and thesolenoid brackets, the wiring can commence.
The Interceptor wiring diagram is availableform the Jensen Owners Club web site www.joc.org.ukand is essential at this point.
There are 3 wires on the back of thedoor-locking switch. The brown wire is a permanent 12-volt live feed, which wewill use to power the control unit. The other 2 wires are the solenoid wiresfor the passenger door. One is brown with a red stripe, which is the wire tothe “locking” solenoid, and the other a brown with a green stripe, which is thewire “unlocking” solenoid.
Picture 2: New RHD driver’s solenoids connected to the existing wiring leadingto the RHD passenger’s door solenoids and remote control unit.
These wires need to be connected to yournew lock and unlock solenoids, so both doors work in unison. The control unitand the passenger and driver’s door solenoids now need to be connected up asper the wiring diagram in the control unit’s instruction book marked “PositivePulse System” (See Figure 1)
A final touch is to connect the pink wirefrom the control unit to the indicator wiring, to flash the indicatorssimultaneously to show the unit has activated. The wiring for the indictors canbe found by the ignition switch, and should be connected via the diodes to thepink wire. The diodes will prevent the indicators flashing simultaneouslyduring normal operation.
All that is left to do know is to check theoperation of the system, and adjust the new solenoids and rods to allow smoothoperation of the door lock.
As long as you have made sure that yourconnections are correct, and you have the correct brackets before you start,the job can be done in about 2 hours. And for just over £100 including VAT andpostage, is excellent value. Worried about reliability? Steve Payne has hadthis system on his car for 18 months, with faultless reliability.
21st century electronics on anInterceptor. Whatever next? Well, you can get optional extras for this centrallocking control unit, which includes a connection to close your electricwindows when you lock the doors. Watch this space…
