Fitting the new centre console
As you can see from the above photo the lower dash of a TD5 is of a different design. Older Defenders had a raised section in the middle. This raised section needs to be removed to allow the new dash tray to fit in place.
Apologies to anyone still waiting for details and photos showing the fitting of the 2002 dash. In the near future I will take my dash to bits, photograph the relevant parts and complete this section of the website write-up. It should all hopefully make sense then. In the meantime please see my brief explanation below.
My Defender is a 1996 model with the raised section in the centre as in these pictures. I also used the original upper dash support.
The top of the front edge of the lower part has to be cut level and the centre cutout section made, similar to on the TD5 picture at the top of this page. The wiper motor cover also needed some metal removing and so does a part of the upper support (to allow the stereo to fit into position). The other main problem I encountered was that the vent handles are in the wrong place for the new tray and the tray can't be put into position with the vent louvres still glued into the new tray. A Stanley knife solved those problems but you have to go very slow and careful because you can't put the material back once it's removed (especially with the tray being £50 on its own). If you're methodical it's all fairly easy though. Some of the fittings couldn't be used for the intended purpose also.
For the electrical side of things I intend to use an additional fuse box (powered from a second battery) to run all of the additional "luxury" items and keep away from the existing wiring as much as possible.