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Quiz time!

OK, AFLers, today's quiz!

Just pulling onto the ferry to return home after a weekend in the UK (including a trip to Sodbury) and my electrics go crazy. I noticed that turning my headlights on caused the radio/MP3 player to stop but there was more! My dipped headlights wouldn't work at all although sidelights and main beam were OK. The panel lights are now all out (although they are on when the ignition is on and the lights are turned off and are extinguished when I turn on the sidelights). The fuel gauge and temp gauge are are hard to the right and the ammeter is hard to the left. With the sidelights on, I get the following warning lights - main beam, rear fog and heated rear window. If I flash the main beam, the main beam warning light goes out! The indicators aren't working although the hazards are! Lastly, and I am sure this is electrical, I get a distinct graunching noise from the gearbox (ZF) with the engine running in both Park and Neutral and the radio completely blanks if it is on at the time.

It's too dark to get out there with a meter tonight, but what does the panel think? Does it sound like the left column stalk switch or maybe an earth? How about that gearbox noise?

Should have mentioned, it's a 1987 130 V8 (Foley CSW conversion) and no fuses have blown.

Malcolm

Reply to
balloons
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On Sun, 26 Oct 2003 23:14:14 +0000 (UTC), snipped-for-privacy@cix.compulink.co.uk made me spill my meths by writing:

Those column stalks cause odd gremlins when they fail don't they? Maybe not as bad as what you just described though :)

Reply to
Wayne Davies

Land Rover gremlins. Don't like the cold weather and you woke them up going to Sodbury.

Reply to
Nikki

Guess - faulty earth between engine and chassis or instrument cluster and chassis. Strange effects possibly caused by non standard relays, some earthed to different parts of the vehicle. JD

Reply to
JD

On or around Sun, 26 Oct 2003 23:14:14 +0000 (UTC), snipped-for-privacy@cix.compulink.co.uk enlightened us thusly:

sounds like a crap earth somewhere. Had a similar though less severe thing with mine where it would stop using the battery and run everything off the alternator directly. quite clever of it, I thought... I localised it to one of 4 connections, viz. main battery lead to starter post, battery terminals, battery earth lead to chassis. After refitting the gearbox the 2 battery ones were disconnected and reconnected and so far it hasn't done it again.

Reply to
Austin Shackles

The plot thickens. Had a bit of a look around the electrics and it still points towards the column switches, however, I realised that the heater fan was on. Turning this off caused all the warning lights to extinguish, the gauges to read correctly and the indicators to start working. However, still no dipped or main headlights (except using the flasher stalk).

Malcolm.

P.S The strange gearbox noise I was getting in park and neutral doesn't occur until I turn on the sidelights, and remains even if they are turned off again! Seems I have some major gremlins!

Reply to
balloons

On the bright side at least you can use the Ballon to get home..... :-)

Sounds like the heater is first suspect with possibly fuses blown to the normal lights feed...i.e. is this a different feed than the stalk-flash?

Lee D

Reply to
Lee_D

The gearbox gremlins are a really nasty lot and when they get together with electrickery gremlins there's no knowing what might happen.

Reply to
Nikki

The headlight fuses are downstream of the switch so no power is getting to the fuses. One more observation, the indicators work fine, until I turn the sidelights on :-)

Neither of the circuit diagrams I have expand on the connectivity of the column switches and very helpfully just draw a circle :-(

I think I'll let my garage sort this lot out!

Malcolm.

Reply to
balloons

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