On Saturday I took my Dad and Sister for a day green laning in the Lake District in my S3 109. They were both new to off road driving but took to it very well. All had gone well until the last couple of miles of trail when smoke poured from dash and from under the bonnet.
The fire extinguisher that I have fitted to the dash had been stolen on the previous Tuesday and an old one that I had in the rear locker would not discharge.
Fortunately, once the ignition was turned off things started to cool off and after a couple of minutes there was no more smoke.
I'm no electrician (or mechanic for that matter) but it appears that the pos cable to the output connector on the dash (what are these for?) had become disconnected and fallen on to the neg cable. The neg cable had melted though the loom right the way to where it was earthed on the bulkhead
We managed to separate most of the burnt cables, remove the most of the pos cable and continue to the main road.
We spent the rest of the journey looking at each other and asking "can you smell something"
So after all the excitement I've got a S3 that requires a new loom my question are
- Where can you get new one or do you have to make them up yourself
- How much do they cost?
- I don't want to do this job myself, How long do you think it might to take for a land rover specialist to do the job. I think he charges about £20 per hour which is reasonable but it starts to get expensive if there's 2 days work involved.