Still hand editing links, but closing in on the solution - here's the wooden tray

OK - i'm an imgur virgin, here goes - start point, with aluminium angle screwed to the bottom and two wood pieces to brace the top hinge - someone either cut the top edge, or the plastic weld simply just broke, so the hinges were floating

Hooray, now I have to figure out how the hell i did that

lol - the shocks i took off mine did little more than act as height limiters, they went up and down like concertinas. Gas-filled Monroes will give you the best ride for the price IMHO. Bilstein are in a different price bracket. Boge are only available as fronts, for some reason

Too true. Mission complete, as of today. Did a tray out of wood, and the front lined in a few mm of foam with a distressed ( to make it look the same) PU leather covering. Wood's good as it takes multiple retaining staples for the covering. Not sure how I would have achieved the same effect using plastic tbh. The foam helps mould to the multiple contours of the centre console

I need to pull my hevac off, but I've got two small metal boxes there, maybe 3x5x10 cm, coax going in one side and audio jacks out the other: video and l/r which heads to the dvd player. They seem to be interconnected too.
I also need to check which cables are going up to the head rests

Tnx Richard, I have two on the roof, so I guess one was TV, and the other probably after mkt radio. HNH has one tho, as per his YouTube vid

Yes, get lots of spare plastic bits. You will probably need to depin the connector, or cut lots of wires and resolder them. May be easier to just respray the replacement

Thanks Richard, I'm not sure I'd ever crack it by myself. Embarassingly I've never entirely worked out what does what - partly because the TV has never worked, and partly because various bits are buried in different random places and it's only by elimination that I work out that they must be something to do with the RSE. I will photograph what I have - it'll be a bit like Krypton factor to assemble... congrats on your retirement btw

Jeez, someone just raised the stakes. Let me know how it goes HnH, I don't have the vhs, but all the rear seat wiring/ decoders seem to be there, buried behind the HEVAC

Ooh, sounds good. I think you just volunteered to be our pathfinder Morat :-)

I hear you Leo - I nearly used the aluminium tray from a roast chicken today... So far I've rigged up an angled aluminium bar on the base to support wood struts to brace the hinges for the cubby box lid, and put two x 2cm thicknesses of ply on the base to lift the single DIN unit up to where it will sit snugly underneath the wooden Autobiography switch unit in your photos. The ply will get covered in "leather", and then I'll fashion two side pieces to fill the 2-3cm gap either side of the unit, also covered in PU leather. There are so many contours going on it was just going to be impossible to do it all as one piece. It's only a couple of kids who will look at it anyway : o), and they don't care as long as it plays their favourite cartoons.
That makes me think, in these days of isolation - maybe I should just hook the RR up to the trickle charger and we can put the kids in the back of the car to watch cartoons while we potter around the house/ garden - I think I may have just found the path to corona virus sanity

Lol...too honest for your own good. Don't forget to take your bags for life, and a really long shopping list. I'm sure the police have better things to do, but don't stop off at any Derbyshire beauty spots

Tnx Leo, that photo must have been a brand new one - looks gleaming. I have the top wooden piece, but where the blaupunkt stereo is removed there is a gap to fill to replace it with a single din unit.
I had thought of builders foam too, but as you say, that stuff is hard to control, and would just as easily blow out the sides of the centre console, so yes I'm fishing around for which plastic to use. what I'm trying at the moment is v brittle, even heated ( just scrap from my garage - acrylic/ acetate I think) so possibly I need to source some ABS

The 50th has in-car entertainment at the back of the centre console. PO ripped out the old vhs machine and replaced it with a dvd - fair enough - but the vhs unit was probably 1.5 DIN, the DVD unit is just 1, and he/ she did a p*** poor job of remounting it, so I want to fix it. The centre console is leather covered, and I need to fashion a fascia to go at the back of it, in which to mount the single din unit, for passenger access. It mounts just above the floor vents. The fascia ideally should be slightly curved, to match the contours of the back of the console. I can use wood and epoxy to build the innards of what I need to mount the dvd player, but I can't work out what material is best to use for the face plate (which I will then cover with a thin layer of foam and faux leather). I'm messing around with some acrylic at the moment, but it's a bit painful. I could try a sheet of ABS, or acetate. Or try and fab something in fibre glass, even papier mache !! I'm sure there's something better/ easier - ideas anyone?

So apparently (according to the LR BeCM vid) the 4 turns is to do with the passive immobilisation (came in from 1996)- so if the car is early and does not have that fitted then hence no need for 4 turns, but yes on the 2001 , 4 turns https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3uLZoQ-DEY&t=545s at 16mins

on the key fob you mean programming, or syncing? If the fob was bought from a dealer for your vin then it is/ shd be programmed. To sync you just turn to lock while pressing lock, turn to unlock pressing unlock. Then you should be able to lock/ unlock on the button, i don't think I've ever had to try more than twice to get it in sync.

Rob

+1, you needed to do the "weekly shop" at the big one down the road. That's only a problem if it turns out you actually live next door to the biggest one around o)

sounds like an elegant solution - it's nice when you get to put these things to bed

Thanks - nice story, fairy tale ending...

When I was dash-off and had an issue with the RH blend motor the HEVAC unit did not move the distribution motor either in response to any of the buttons - but it would move the distribution flaps during the start-up test. Once the RH blend issue was resolved, the distribution function worked fine. Message is - don't panic - but as above, diagnostics is the key.

I just put the relay between U/ Blue and the H/L switch and it works no problem (still driving the coil of the relay from the cigar lighter). Like that it still leaves the ability to have Park lights on, so I may just leave things there, as I guess that function is of some use. The relay will end up in the centre console cubby, so it can easily be replaced, or just jumped, without pulling things apart