I have now achieved this and found/learned a few things on the way so though I would pass the info on.

On my 84 car, the central locking was working fine, but I wanted to add the remote feature.

Having done this already on several cars, including other Jags, I set about the task with gusto and fully expected to have it done in a few hours.

I bought one of these.....


Next step is to find the central locking controller. My 84 car does not have the Keikert controller but there is a lock/unlock relay in the drivers footwell behind the trim panel.

Near this relay you will find a separate wiring loom with only 2 wires in it. One orange/red, the other orange/green. These 2 wires are the lock/unlock wires. Pulling these wires to 12V will trigger the system to lock and unlock (I forget which way round the colour coding is, but it's easy to try out)

Normally, once you have found these lock/unlock wires and have worked out if they need to go to 12V or ground to trigger the locking system, you are 80% done. All you have to do now is piggyback the relevant lock/unlock wires from the remote locking system and find a constant 12V source and a ground (would be easy in the footwell as there are plenty of wires to choose from)

When I touched these 2 wires to 12V, I got the reassuring thunk, thunk as the doors locked and unlocked. I was just about to declare victory when I noticed that all doors were locking and unlocking except the drivers door. Hmmm........ According to the wiring diagram there is a solenoid in each door, so it was strange that the drivers door wasn't working. I then took off the drivers door card to find something quite interesting......... actually there was no solenoid in the drivers door, despite it being clearly marked on the wiring diagram :-(

So, now we have to move to plan B

Now we have to go buy one of these......
There are 2 rods inside the door...... the upper rod connects the inside handle to the door catch. The lower rod connects the locking/unlocking flap to the door lock. It is this lower rod that we want to move with the solenoid we just bought. Mounting the solenoid was relatively easy, but you need to make sure the window can still go up and down :-)

Once the solenoid was positioned correctly, I then tapped into the power mirror wires in the door and mounted the remote control unit in the space behind the speaker. Final piece was to connect the dome light supervision wire to the door lamp so that the remote unit can turn on the interior lights when the car is unlocked.

So, for less than $100 we now have remote locking (on all doors!)

If anyone wants to tackle this, I can provide more details. I suspect on the later cars (86 on) there is a solenoid in the drivers door, and you would only need to find the keikert unit and tap into that to get everything working.

Happy Friday !

 

Good work!

Ser IIIs are a little tricky as three different central lock schemes were used.

1) (until mid 1983 or so) Lucas solenoids with central locking operational from both front doors. In these cars both front door "solenoids" function as both solenoids and control units.

2) (until mid 1985 or so) Lucas solenoids with central locking operational from the driver's door only. In these cars the driver's door has only the control unit...which looks just like a solenoid so I'm surprised you didn't see it. Did you find the solenoids in the other doors?

3) (mid/late 1985 and later) Kiekert motor system with central locking operational only from the drivers door. As above, the driver's door has a control unit which looks just like the lock motors used in the other doors. As with you installation and additional solenoid must be added to the driver's door for full remote locking to work.



Cheers
DD

 

Hi Doug

I did see the controller in the drivers door. I didn't check the other doors as I worked out where to mount the solenoid without having to peek at the "factory" location.

Typical Jaguar to keep changing stuff every year or so :-)