I’m looking to add power door locks & alarm to my 90 LS with manual locks. I know this has been done before so I’m looking for pictures / diagrams of the install of the actuators in the doors. Where is the best place to put them? Also any tips on putting in an aftermarket alarm - wire locations / colors would be great.
Thanks
Power door lock install
Hi Cory,
Since I’ve been in your position before, and will be doing it again, I figured I’d write up how I installed power door locks a couple years back. I’ll be doing it again soon, as I want to install them on my new teg. If anybody has any comments please let me know.
Since I noticed there’s some confusion on when PDL’s are required let me clarify. By now you’ve figured out that you need aftermarking door actuators to add electrically locking and unlock to your teg. Once this feature is installed, you will be able to lock and unlock both your car doors via an electrical signal. Whether this comes from a remote/alarm or from a switch mounted in the door, that is up to you. The focus of this part of the install is primarily mechanical.
A note on purchasing kits. I’ve seen kits with a variety of actuator types. 2 wire (slave) and 5 wire (master). I believe the 5 wire variety can send signals back to the relay, informing the brain that the lock as be depressed or unlocked. The relay then sends this signal to the 2 wire actuators, causing all slave actuators to repeat what occured on the master.
Ok, so the general process of installing the door lock is as follows:
1 - make sure you have all the stuff, and enough wires. A coat hanger will help, tape and some string
2 - Unscrew door panels (see helms manual, I can’t remember where all the screws are. I think one in the door handle, latch, side of the door towards the rear). If you have a manual window remove the handle first. To do this, push the surrounding panel inward, and look for a clip on the handle where it sticks onto the crank. Use a flat tip screw driver to push off that clip, adn the door handle will slip off. Sorry if this description sucks. Just take your time and don’t fight with it. I’m not sure how the power window switch comes off, because I haven’t done it yet. If you know let me know.
3 - Remove door panels. The door panels are clipped at the bottom and hooked at the top. So to remove it you pull out the bottom, and lift. When pulling out the bottom be very carefull not to bust or lose the little studs which secure the panel to the door. A door panel removal tool is useful here. If not, try a flat tool covered in fabric. When pulling up on the door, you have to fight with more clips. These guys are metal, and dig into the paint. Fortunately it’s all hidden, but nonetheless take it easy.
4 - Plastic cover. No choice you have to cut or somehow remove it. Silicone/tape it back in place when you’re done.
5 - Ok, so now the door is revealed. You have two tasks remaining: Mount the actuator and wire the door.
Mounting the actuator. Pictures speak clearest here. Check it out.
The actuator will sit in the armrest opening. But be careful to make sure you can fit the door panel over the actuator. I chose to route the actuator arm in this fashion because I believe it transfers the force in the most direct manner. I also used tape over the rods before inserting the clip to fasten rods together. This was done to reduce the chance of the thing slipping.
I had to drill holes in the door. I would be happy if someone could tell me a way to do this which I didn’t have to drill holes. Make sure your screws don’t extend too deep or they can hit the glass.
Wiring. This is tricky and painful at times. You will want to route the wires throught the door, through the doorjam and into the cabin using the original wireing covers. Remove the harness from the inide of the door. On my 90LS there was a large hole in the harness so I could easily route the wires through it. On my buddies civic (pictured here) he had to drill out some of the harness.
I used a hanger with string taped to the tip to get a string through the doorjam, the rubber tubing, and eventually into the cabin. Once you have a string through everything, you just tape the wires to it and pull them through.
How you arrange things inside the car cabin is up to you. I like to keep things really tidy, but since I’m going to get an car alarm installed soon, I left most of it hanging around.
For power, use the driver’s side fuse panel. There power availible there on one of the 5 free pins in the middle of the four wire harnesses.
Sorry if it’s not too clear, I have to get back to work. If you have any questions, remember to search around first, and then post!
Good Luck,
ed
Glad I found this I’ll starting an install either tomarrow afternoon or the next morning and this is where I wanted to start. If I have any problems I’ll post them up or pm you. cool? Also, what happend to the picks? This thread is only like 12 days old 
Anyways, thanks for the write up.
I suck, I didn’t subscribe to my own reply…
sorry for the lack of reply. Definitely PM me if you have any Q’s
I dunno where my pics went, i think i messed with my webhost…try here. The pics are the same…you can probably make the connection 
UPDATE: I’ve added pics to the G2IC forum, so I can’t lose them again
Sorry to raise this post from the dead. Does anyone know where to get power for aftermarket door actuators? The 5 free pins mentioned in this article are only on with the ignition which wouldn’t work for keyless entry.
either the main ignition harness or at the fuse box.
either way, make sure you fuse anything you add to your car.
I got it from the fuse panel to the left of the clutch.
Dare I add a pic? In the center there are 5 free connectors. One is a fused 12V always on. That’s the boy you want. As IWannaBeKyle says, a fuse is a good idea.
I guess I need to check each connection for power. I used one of those 5 pins and only got power with the ignition on. I’m assuming from what you said that one of them is always on.
As for the fuse, the relay for the actuators has a fuse inline already.
Check the helms page 23-41, it labels the connectors
A-E (the connectors are labelled left to right, as if on two pages). I think you want connection C. Which is the bottom left connector. On page 23-43 you will see Option C being connected to power at all times.
I think thats how mine is setup, i’m not sure tho, I would have to go and open it up to check.
Here are relay wiring diagrams for adding doorlocks to your car, along with a whole bunch of other relay wiring diagrams. http://sonolithics.com/files/bosch.pdf :p94
A question for fcm:
Would I need to run the negative alarm trigger or positive alarm trigger with my compustar 2WAM-A alarm. Also, you might not know but, which wires coming out of my brain would i need to use for the PDL. Thx alot
If you are talking about “door triggers” you would use the neg. (-) , [red/white (-)Door Sensing, connect it to Green/Red @ fuse box in drivers kick panel, [caution, there is more then one green/red wire]
The Compustar’s D/L wires are…
Blue (-)Unlock 250mA
Blue/Black (-)Lock 250mA
94
Thanks alot fcm.
To take it a bit further, my 90 gs has just about every other option except for PDL so I gotta do it all from scratch. I have the 2 wire PDL actuators already in my doors and I’m going to go buy the proper relays to wire them to for the power door locks. I was just wondering which wires from the actuators goto which pins on the relays, which go to the fuse box, which ground, and lastly which goto what wires off my alarm. Thanks again.
On my install, all the wires from the actuators went into the power door lock relay. The relay itself had 4 wires to go out:
1 - 12V power (connect to the fuse panel location mentioned above)
2 - Ground (find a chassis spot and stick it)
3 & 4, the lock and unlock negative triggered signals (this goes to the alarm brain as described by fcm, but if your alarm doesn’t have negative triggered outputs, you may need to have another relay to flip the signal)
Here’s another resource: http://www.miata.net/garage/pwrlock.htm
Thx alot guys. Im going to tackle this on friday, my first unemployed day of the holiday season!
Good luck with it. I’ve done it twice now, once you hear the “click” sound from your locks 10m from your car, it’ll put a smile on your face.
Just remember that the drivers side door lock only locks if the handle is up, or the door is closed… 
Sweetness. Ive got my wires all run through my doors and through the factory wire loom. Friday, my first day of work on them, it took me a good 3 hours worth of trying to figure stuff out and run the wire for my drivers side. today when I did the passenger side, it took me about 45 mins to do. Totally sweetness. I had some time to work on the relay assembly and it looks pretty damn sharp. I just might be able to get some pics up of how its looking as Im pretty damn proud of my schweet relayness.
Anyhoo, time for bed. Plenty more time to work on them tomorrow.
(before the grey cup match of course!)
Of course…EE all the way :hyper: 
94
hehe … Im not sure who I want to win. I dont really like Montreal, no matter what sport but I think this is one that im just going to go in even minded and hope to watch a good game.
On another note, would it be wise to add an inline fuse between my 12v power source and the relays, or is it ok to rely on the in-relay fuse. I bought Hella relays so I dont know which is the smarter move. I have an inline fuse that I can use, no problem, and it isnt much work to add it in there, but Id like an opinion first.
Thanks again.
