Upgrades 18. Shift Lights

The first part of installing the shift lights is to find the 3 female spade connectors under the dash which it will connect to. Whilst messing with the retaining channels for the windscreen I decided to do this at the same time. Mine were located behind the central dash switches, which were easily found once I removed the dials and started cutting some cable ties. For reference, you are looking for these wires in the following pictures, I chose to then relocate them in an easy to affix location for when the time came to fit the shift lights.

Once I was happy with the location of the electrics, I removed the windscreen and prepared to locate the shift lights on the scuttle. I have bought the Aces lights from Caterham along side their special metal mount for RHD cars. 3 holes will need to be drilled to accommodate the lights, they recommend a large 25mm hole for the main cable, but I decided that was too large, and so instead I planned to cut the main shift light wire in half and re-sodler the connections together under the dash. this meant I could get away with a smaller 6-7mm hole for the main wire.

I chose to use 2 x M4 bolts for the mount which required a 4mm hole drilling to accommodate them. If you remove the dials and feel under the dash you can locate the holes to your preference, I chose slightly behind the chassis rail and then used a nyloc nut to tighten the mount up to the scuttle.

for the larger hole I then installed a grommet ready to take the shift lights wire.

I then cut the main shift lights wire in half, and stripped the wires on both sides ready for the re-soldering together. I left this cable length unchanged and decided it will then be easier to solder that way, once done I would loop it up under the dash and cable tie it secure. I chose to individually heat shrink each cable, and then also apply a larger blue heat shrink over the entire lot for protection. This was relatively straight forward to do even if the wires were quite thin.

Then was the task of shortening and applying the spades to the shift light power and RPM cable. I didn't read the manual for this and it recommends not to cut the RPM sensor wire, which I did, it is very thin. This meant I had to actually solder it to a spade connector as it was too lose otherwise. The other connectors simply crimped on fine. I left it long enough that I would be able to hold the main shift light unit in my hand to play with it when sitting in the car. Once I was happy, I connected it to the car, which was pretty obvious as to which went where.

Before fully tidying up the cables I gave it a test, and it all worked nicely out of the box. I ended up using cable ties to secure most of the wires neatly, but then left a loop which sat nicely on the knee trim so I could easily remove the unit and set it up without having to go under the dash.

I chose to secure it with some plastic dual lock 3M Velcro tabs, I put a larger amount on the bulk head, and 3 smaller 15mm squares on the unit itself. This meant the unit would come off and leave the bulk head tabs in place. The first time I did this, the Velcro was so strong, the whole lot came off.