Back when I built the Safari Cab hardtop and barn door for the LJ, I installed a power lock actuator in the tailgate so I could lock/unlock it from the driver's seat. That actuator seems to have lost strength and sometimes can't unlock the tailgate so yesterday I replaced it with a new one. I took a photo while I was replacing the actuator and in case anyone else is interested in installing a power lock in their tailgate I'll document what's involved. This is the new actuator I installed.
I picked up the door lock actuator on a trip to Florida last month at one of my favorite electronics surplus stores (Skycraft Surplus (https://skycraftsurplus.com/). This particular actuator is available on Amazon for about $30 but it was about $10 in the surplus store.
The lock actuator is thin enough to slip inside the tailgate. The yellow dashed line shows where the body of the actuator is, some of it is out of the frame of this photo. The green circles show the screw heads that attach the actuator to the inside of the tailgate (I drilled holes years ago for the original actuator). The orange line shows the rod from the actuator to the lock rod (it's behind some of the latch mechanism so I drew it in for clarity).
I put the wiring for the power lock in back in 2010 when I built the barn door so all of the following images show work I did back then.
Rather than have wires to power the actuator draped from the body to the tailgate, I added a second pair of taiglate contacts:
I pulled a lock switch from some Ford vehicle at the u-pull and mounted it on the panel below the steering wheel. Also added the USB outlet below the switch, although that was later - about 5 years ago. The outlet allows me to charge my phone in it's suction cup holder on the windshield with a very short wire - not a long wire draped all over the interior.
These lock actuators are two-wire devices and the power needs to be reversed to lock vs. unlock. The Ford switch is an SPDT switch, so to make the actuator work properly it provides momentary contact power to one of two relays which send the appropriate polarity voltage to the lock actuator. The circuit is pretty simple - 12v is always routed to both sides of the actuator through the normally closed contacts of both relays. When the lock or unlock switch is pressed, the appropriate relay switches that side of the actuator to ground, completing the circuit to operate the actuator. I mounted these relays under the dash.
If you want to wire a lock actuator without relays, you can use a double-pole, double-throw momentary switch like this:
I took the slightly more complex route with relays because I wanted an OEM-looking switch that would install nicely somewhere in the LJ's dash and the best one I could find in the u-pull was the Ford one in the photo in my last posts. It's a single-pole double-throw momentary so it can't be wired to reverse polarity without the relays.
Over the years it's been very handy to be able to lock or unlock the tailgate from the driver's seat, and I've missed that capability since the original actuator failed. It's nice to have this feature back.
I picked up the door lock actuator on a trip to Florida last month at one of my favorite electronics surplus stores (Skycraft Surplus (https://skycraftsurplus.com/). This particular actuator is available on Amazon for about $30 but it was about $10 in the surplus store.
The lock actuator is thin enough to slip inside the tailgate. The yellow dashed line shows where the body of the actuator is, some of it is out of the frame of this photo. The green circles show the screw heads that attach the actuator to the inside of the tailgate (I drilled holes years ago for the original actuator). The orange line shows the rod from the actuator to the lock rod (it's behind some of the latch mechanism so I drew it in for clarity).
I put the wiring for the power lock in back in 2010 when I built the barn door so all of the following images show work I did back then.
Rather than have wires to power the actuator draped from the body to the tailgate, I added a second pair of taiglate contacts:
I pulled a lock switch from some Ford vehicle at the u-pull and mounted it on the panel below the steering wheel. Also added the USB outlet below the switch, although that was later - about 5 years ago. The outlet allows me to charge my phone in it's suction cup holder on the windshield with a very short wire - not a long wire draped all over the interior.
These lock actuators are two-wire devices and the power needs to be reversed to lock vs. unlock. The Ford switch is an SPDT switch, so to make the actuator work properly it provides momentary contact power to one of two relays which send the appropriate polarity voltage to the lock actuator. The circuit is pretty simple - 12v is always routed to both sides of the actuator through the normally closed contacts of both relays. When the lock or unlock switch is pressed, the appropriate relay switches that side of the actuator to ground, completing the circuit to operate the actuator. I mounted these relays under the dash.
If you want to wire a lock actuator without relays, you can use a double-pole, double-throw momentary switch like this:
I took the slightly more complex route with relays because I wanted an OEM-looking switch that would install nicely somewhere in the LJ's dash and the best one I could find in the u-pull was the Ford one in the photo in my last posts. It's a single-pole double-throw momentary so it can't be wired to reverse polarity without the relays.
Over the years it's been very handy to be able to lock or unlock the tailgate from the driver's seat, and I've missed that capability since the original actuator failed. It's nice to have this feature back.