Electrical & Audio Guides
Fitting Central Locking
You will need:
- Central locking motors out of Mk4/5 Escort or Any Orion
- Brown, Red, White and Yellow wire (3 amp current rating)
- Perforated metal strips (like Mechano)
- Metal rod (coat hanger)
- Some kind of metal linking block (terminal block will do but will need to be strengthened first)
The motors to use come from Mk4 or Mk5 Escorts or any Orion, they are beige or almost white and have 4 wires coming from each. The wires are as follows:
- Red - +12v Power
- Brown - Chassis
- Yellow & White - Lock/Unlock
The motors need to be mounted in the door so that they miss the window when it is wound fully down. I found that mounting them in the bottom right corner is the best place, then they are also directly under the door pin making the mechanical linkage easy to do. the motors can be fixed into the door using the perforated metal strips (1 for each motor). Mark on each strip the width of the opening in the door and then bend at 90° at each of these points. Next measure the width of the lip on the opening and mark the metal strips this far up from the first bends. Make two more bends to 90° at these points and you should now have a metal strip that sits on the door with the bent section level with the inner lip of the door skin (see below).
Screw each end of the bracket to the door and the screw the motor to the bracket, you may need to drill extra holes in the metal strip to make them line up with the holes in the motor. Now you know that this will all line up, you can work out how long the connecting bars need to be. You need to connect the motor to the door pin bar. I was lucky enough to have a fitting kit from an old central locking kit so this was easy, in it were two metal bars and two connecting blocks. The metal bars can be made out of coat hangers, and simply need to go from the top of the motor to the bar that runs from the door pin to the door latch. The end of the bar that goes onto the motor needs to be shaped so that it fits through the hole but doesn't come out when the door locks or unlocks. Once you have a bar that fits and is the right length, you can worry about connecting it to the door pin bar. the kit I had contained two small metal link block, which had a slot in one side and a normal hole in the other, both sides had a grub screw (see below)
These blocks were made from brass so with the help of a drill, a few files and a 4mm tapping tool, it shouldn't be too hard to make your own. I don't know if you can buy them anywhere but I would guess you probably can. You can use terminal blocks for this but they will need to be strengthened. To connect the two bars you simply put one in each side of the linking block and do up the screws.
Now onto the wiring, this is even more simple. You don't need anything other than wire. Connect red wire on each motor to the same fuse that supplies the interior light and all the other bits like the cigarette lighter. Now connect the brown wire on each motor to a suitable grounding point. You can screw these to the inside of each door but sometimes the door earths are not as good as they could be so it might be worth running them to the ground points inside the car. The last two wires are the easiest of all, you just connect them together yellow to yellow and white to white, and that should be it. When you lock either door the other should follow and the same when you unlock them. If it doesn't work check all the connections and links.
