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Discovery II Faults (1999 V8 SE)

Rather than ask for fixes I thought I'd place a list of the faults I've had and the fixes we eventually found. I'd be interested to see if anyone else has had the same issues (especialy the AFM one)

When it's going, it's a great machine, but you really need to be a genius to chase failure symptoms to the actual fault (or have an Autologic or Testbook). I have made use of a very broad selection of swearwords and a broader amount of cash getting this littany of faults rectified.

HDC/TC and ABS lights / The Three Amigos. I had two causes of this about 6 months apart. This fault was intermittant to start with. My garage kept resetting the computer and they would stay off for a few weeks as the faults were caused by the SLABS computer log filling up with faults relating to power. This was traced to the alternator putting out a slightly lower voltage than required. The alternator eventually failed completely so I replaced it (John Deere supply an alternator which is identical to the Landrover one but is half the price) This cured the ABS/HDC/TC faults for about 6 months.

The lights returned and this time I needed to replace the ABS Valve Body. There is a part replacement if you can get someone keen to take it on, otherwise see if you can part exchange your existing one. The price from a dealer for a new one is painful. You can still drive the car with the three amigos lit but you have no ABS or TC. Bear that in mind.

Failed Air Flow Meter - truly weird. My Disco started running really crap at hgher speed, would go like to clappers up to 50kph and then run out of puff. I checked everything that I could think of - plugs/leads etc. Turned out that the K&N air filter had caused the Air Flow Meter probe to malfunction. Don't ever, EVER put an oil impregnated air filter (such as K&N) on your Disco II or Range Rover P38. It will wreck the AFM eventually. If you've got one, get rid of it and put a paper one in. I couldn't get a Disco II AFM easily, but my garage managed to fit a P38 Range Rover one as it is the same part but needs to be spliced to the wiring harness as the connector plug is different.

Cruise Control Failed The cruise control gave up due to the vacuum hose fracturing and unable to hold vacuum. Easy replacement.

A real strange one One morning my engine fired up normally and after about 5 seconds flashed the transmission failure lights (M ans S flashing). At the same time the engine dropped about 400 RPM below normal idle and sounded like it was running on 4-6 pots. It wasn't misfiring or smoking, but had very low power. I shit it off and pulled the battery lead off for a few minutes. When I reconnected the battery the lights were gone but the engine was still behaving weird. I needed to move the car so I put it into low range to makew the most of what little power I had and low and behold the engine came right. I swapped between Low and High range a couple of times and the engine kept running badly in high range, but ok in low. I took it for a drive in low range and after a couple of minutes the fault must have cleared and she went back to running normally. Out of curiosity I took it to my service agent (not a dealership) and plugged it into the Autologic box to read the faults - just a low voltage fault on the transmission.) Has run fine ever since.

Precision British engineering - just love it. ;-)

Chris, Wellington, New Zealand.

Reply to
Chris.Manning.nz
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Well worth knowing, cheers.

Well known issue in the BMW world. Doesn't surprise me really as the sensing element is the same part as that for an E39 540i BMW.

Very common, especially on older disco's.

Ah, that'll be the Lord Lucas playing silly beggers again..... Badger.

Reply to
Badger

Lord Bosch on the Td5, surely?

Richard

Reply to
beamendsltd

Is it not Bosch, as bastardised by Lucas, though? Certainly some of the ecu's are Bosch/Lucas, although the V8 engine ecu is indeed pure Bosch Motronic. Badger.

Reply to
Badger

Not on the Td5 - I was at Lucas Diesels (now Delphi Diesels) at the time - the injectors are Lucas, but the ECU Bosch. The technology share deal expired before this (the old CAV systems).

Bosch are terrible for not allowing access inside ECU's to find faults/problems except for what they want people to see, and they *never* make mistakes (I found a rouge CAN message while at Rolls - would they admit it??), whereas Lucas allow full access to memory etc (to those who know how) for debugging/fault location.

The Lucas ECU is (or was, a few years ago anyway), far more advanced that anyone elses, being configurable for 4 to 16 Cylinders and just about every other parameter is changable (on the fly, which is fun if you take the limiters of everything and do a cruise resume to 100mph on a 12L CAT engine). Lucas ECU's are fitted to a lot engines that are considered superior, but are more often than not re-badged to imply they are in-house designs.

Sorry to bang on, but Lucas get a lot of stick for problems that are nothing to do with them, and very rarely get acknowleged for their successes. I remember some years back reading an American wittering on about Lucas, yet the box had "Made With Pride in The USA" on it.....

All this might have changed under Delhpi though.

Richard

Reply to
beamendsltd

Sorry if I picked it up wrong, I assumed petrol as we were talking about AQFM's and K&N's.

Talking of ECU's, Lucas make the Main Engine Control Unit (MECU) and Digital version (DECU) that controls the engines and reheat on RB199 engines as fitted to Tornado aircraft. The MECU is fairly reliable, but does have the odd glitch every now and again, the DECU is slightly superior and easier to "talk to". The problems, electrically at least, are most of the various pieces of electrical test equipment made by the same firm that are needed to talk to the ecu's. To say they tend to be unreliable is almost an understatement! Lucas, in all honesty, has been tarred (sometimes unfairly, I admit) by the brush of "Prince of darkness" for a long, long time now - based on previous performance, yet I doubt that many of their competitors were really much better at the same period. Names like Magnetti Minarelli spring to mind.......... Badger.

Reply to
Badger

Interesting as my 2003 td5 discovery 2 has developed the three amigos probl em. I've been through the various chief culprits as expounded on you tube i.e. wheel sensors, shuttle valve switch, shuttle valve switch internal connecto r plug bypass without success. Having interrogated the abs with a plug in b ox it tells me there is a reference earth fault. I googled the 3 amigos and whilst the landygroups mention it bitterly no on e seems to have gone deeper than sensors or switch connections. I'm hoping someone here has had the same problem and can suggest where the earth reference point would be connected before I make a journey to the loc al reference library in the hope they have a detailed service manual.

Reply to
johnjessop46

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