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Battery Discharge Problem

(Apologies for message length -(shear desperation!)

History: Owned from new (1995) Range Rover 4.6 HSE. 106,000 miles - Full main dealer service history. Very well looked after vehicle. Always garaged. No really significant problems throughout this time considering age and mileage. (until now).

We moved into a newly constructed house in July and the discharge problems started from that time.

Car is always double alarmed and parked in lowest ride height setting.

First sign was getting the message on the console "Gearbox Fault" (on starting ignition), which I am told by dealers that it is the first sign of a weakened battery. Because battery was just over 3 years old and only the second battery car has had, I assumed it was faulty and replaced with brand new unit. Vehicle is not used every day, sometime being unused for 1 or 2 weeks.

Five days later, new battery fails, with resultant message "Gearbox Fault" on console. Car taken into main dealer to check out charging circuit and battery with no obvious signs of problems. Original battery has been checked and nothing wrong with it.

Car has been too and fro to main dealers to try and uncover what is causing battery to discharge in my garage. It never happens while in main dealer, has been on their premises for periods of 5, 7 and 14 days and they cannot find a problem. All earth points throughout car have been checked and passed.

I am now looking at my own garage where car is parked.

In garage there is the main electrical consumer unit, also there are two overhead garage door motors. Have moved car other side of garage, away from consumer unit to no effect (battery still drains down). Have turned off both garage door motors - battery still drains down. Is it possible that consumer unit could transmit a frequency that would cause an electrical circuit on the vehicle to become active which would eventually drain battery over 5 days. This period is the one constant in the whole sorry affair.

From tonight, the vehicle is to be parked outside, well away from garage to test whether the consumer unit is the guilty party.

The main dealers service manager is totally stumped with this problem. Is it likely that a household electrical consumer unit could be the cause? If anyone has heard of something similar to the above problem, I would very much like to hear from them.

Bob

Reply to
robert.beasley
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I'm going to pip AndyC to the post here. Do you, or your neighbours, have an Oregon Scientific type weather station? If so, it could be interfering with your central locking system, continuously awakening the electronics until the battery flattens.

See Andy's page

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forsome other suggestions, and
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If I'm right, you owe Andy a beer for getting to the bottom of it in the first place!

David.

Reply to
David French

Or a Poltergeist ?? They need a constant energy supply.

Reply to
Igundwane

David> I'm going to pip AndyC to the post here. Do you, or your David> neighbours, have an Oregon Scientific type weather station? David> If so, it could be interfering with your central locking David> system, continuously awakening the electronics until the David> battery flattens.

Or anything else running on 433MHz for that matter.

Your service manager should have known about this one. There is a Land Rover Technical Service Bulletin on the subject.

AndyC

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+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Andy Cunningham aka AndyC the WB | andy -at- cunningham.me.uk | +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |
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- Everything you wanted to know || about the P38A Range Rover but were afraid to ask. |+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+"And everything we want to get/We download from the InternetAll we hear is/Internet Ga-Ga/Cyberspace Goo-goo" -- from "Radio Ga Ga"/"We will rock you"
Reply to
AndyC the WB

Thanks to David and Andy

Early July we were given a Oregon Scientific Weather Station by friends - the car was not parked in the garage until mid to late July when all the problems started to happen. Would you happen to know how far away from the vehicle this weather station has to be? (can always give it away I suppose if this is the cause of all my woes). Andy - do you know the relevant technical service bulletin number which I can quote to the Dealer. Thanks Bob

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Reply to
robert.beasley

robert> Thanks to David and Andy Early July we were given a Oregon robert> Scientific Weather Station by friends - the car was not robert> parked in the garage until mid to late July when all the robert> problems started to happen. Would you happen to know how robert> far away from the vehicle this weather station has to be? robert> (can always give it away I suppose if this is the cause of robert> all my woes). Andy - do you know the relevant technical robert> service bulletin number which I can quote to the Dealer. robert> Thanks Bob

TSB Number 0063.

I haven't experimented to remove the source,

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+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Andy Cunningham aka AndyC the WB | andy -at- cunningham.me.uk | +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |
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- Everything you wanted to know || about the P38A Range Rover but were afraid to ask. |+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+"And everything we want to get/We download from the InternetAll we hear is/Internet Ga-Ga/Cyberspace Goo-goo" -- from "Radio Ga Ga"/"We will rock you"
Reply to
AndyC the WB

I found this thread utterly fascinating - just one question - who 'discovered' that the Oregon can discharge a car battery?

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cunningham.me.uk

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Reply to
Graeme

That would be Andy. A man of more patience than I.

Reply to
David French

You must have generous friends, not to mention a big garage!

I would offer to take it off your hands, but now I have a P38 myself, it would be a bit of an own goal.

Reply to
David French

Graeme> I found this thread utterly fascinating - just one Graeme> question - who 'discovered' that the Oregon can discharge Graeme> a car battery?

I claim the credit for this one. I discovered that after SWMBO bought me a (Oooh! Shiny!) weather station for my birthday last year that if I left the car for more than overnight the battery would go flat. I didn't make the connection at the time, though.

After much checking and hacking I discovered that the battery drain followed a predictable cycle - 2minutes at 0.6A, 30 seconds at 0.01A, then back to 0.6A again.

After much testing I came to the conclusion that this was related to something waking the BeCM and resorted to systematically disconnecting things to work out where the problem lay. Finally, I disconnected the R.F. Receiver and the problem went away. The receiver just listens on

433MHz and sends what it hears to the BeCM which decides whether or not to open the car. Once awakened from it's low current sleep mode, the BeCM will then wait for 2 minutes before returning to sleep.

I'd been asking about this here, on various mailing lists, and both the LRE and LROi forums to no avail, then someone who works at a LR dealer said he'd just seen a service bulletin about this and that there was a new receiver which fixed the problem.

After I'd replaced the receiver the problem went away. I was still mystified as to the root cause. Finally, about a month later I dug out the instructions for the weather station for some totally unrelated reason and saw "433MHz". "Well, bugger me!", says I.

I have to confess I haven't actually put the old receiver back and switched off the weather station to prove the point.

The moral of the story is that troubleshooting a complex problem is down to persistence, understanding how it all works, and more persistence.

AndyC

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+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Andy Cunningham aka AndyC the WB | andy -at- cunningham.me.uk | +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |
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- Everything you wanted to know || about the P38A Range Rover but were afraid to ask. |+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+"And everything we want to get/We download from the InternetAll we hear is/Internet Ga-Ga/Cyberspace Goo-goo" -- from "Radio Ga Ga"/"We will rock you"
Reply to
AndyC the WB

Aha! Thanks for that - makes problem solving with my Ser2a seem as simple as it is! Next question - what's the probability of two P38 owners also owning an Oregon whatsit tripping over each other on a newsgroup? Not sure but I guess that's what it is all about really - nice one!

Graeme

Reply to
Graeme

Graeme> Aha! Thanks for that - makes problem solving with my Ser2a Graeme> seem as simple as it is! Next question - what's the Graeme> probability of two P38 owners also owning an Oregon Graeme> whatsit tripping over each other on a newsgroup? Not sure Graeme> but I guess that's what it is all about really - nice one!

The thing that really gets people is that until three years ago when I bought the rangie I'd hardly touched a car. Certainly didn't do anything as complex as changing the oil and I still prefer to leave anything non-trivial involving the mucky noisy bit to the garage.

Between subscribing here, several magazine forums, a few mailing lists, and even going on some courses, I've managed to learn quite a lot, much of it specific to the P38A but some of it much more general.

All I need to do now is get some more experience at the business end of a spanner to be a bit more confident about actually doing the fixing myself.

AndyC

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+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Andy Cunningham aka AndyC the WB | andy -at- cunningham.me.uk | +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |
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- Everything you wanted to know || about the P38A Range Rover but were afraid to ask. |+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+"And everything we want to get/We download from the InternetAll we hear is/Internet Ga-Ga/Cyberspace Goo-goo" -- from "Radio Ga Ga"/"We will rock you"
Reply to
AndyC the WB

What's also odd is that I'm driving down to visit my dad tomorrow, in my P38a for the first time, and he has an Oregon weather station. So this thread has also jogged my memory and saved me a bat flattery. Quite lucky, as I would have to park so as to box him in, so he wouldn't even be able to jump start me. So thanks, to the original poster!

David.

Reply to
David French

Some of the chamberlain, liftmaster, and craftsman garage door openers also use 433MHz. The ones sold in the US are normally at 390MHz, but when there is an interference problem on that freq the boards & transmitters are changed out to 433 to resolve the short range problem. At one time I was told this board was available because it is the board they use on the units that are exported to other countries. I do not know if it is all exports or just some of them.

Doordoc

Reply to
Doordoc

I thank my wife for telling me to look for a newsgroup to see if I could find any help. I havn't totally proven that it will be the Weatherstation yet but I pray that it is.

Bob

Reply to
robert.beasley

The manufacturer of the two door openers is a German company called ''Hormann KG'' , and looking through the installation manual, it states a remote control frequency of 40,685 MHz - Is this 40.685 MHz or 406.85 MHz ????

Reply to
robert.beasley

robert> The manufacturer of the two door openers is a German robert> company called ''Hormann KG'' , and looking through the robert> installation manual, it states a remote control frequency robert> of 40,685 MHz - Is this 40.685 MHz or 406.85 MHz ????

Most of Europe uses the comma as a decimal seperator, to this is

40.685MHz.

AndyC

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+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Andy Cunningham aka AndyC the WB | andy -at- cunningham.me.uk | +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |
formatting link
- Everything you wanted to know || about the P38A Range Rover but were afraid to ask. |+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+"And everything we want to get/We download from the InternetAll we hear is/Internet Ga-Ga/Cyberspace Goo-goo" -- from "Radio Ga Ga"/"We will rock you"
Reply to
AndyC the WB

On or around Thu, 13 Nov 2003 22:38:10 +0000, AndyC the WB enlightened us thusly:

buy yerself an old series III...

Reply to
Austin Shackles

Also most, if not all of the wireless domestic burglar alarms sold in the UK communicate between sensors and control unit on 433MHz. I've heard that these too cause the auto alarm problem.

Neil

Reply to
HN

Thanks for that bit of info Neil - my house alarm is wired anyway. I don't want to be premature just yet, but it does look very strongly that the original replys I have had to this thread about the Oregon Weatherstation transmitter (433Mhz), may well be the problem. Will get back to the thread on Sunday which is the end of the test period with what I hope is good news. Bob

Reply to
robert.beasley

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