After Summer Camp, I asked Marty about some of the things that he could sort on my (my wife's) Range Rover and we set a date for last weekend. It turned out to be quite a busy time... for Marty at least :)

A lot of my original list is now gone!
The heated seats now work, and have the uprated 50degree thermostats, which are very popular.
The HEVAC unit now shows all of its pixels. Also, it is LED illuminated which doesn't quite match but is very clear and pleasant to look at.

The drivers door lock was replaced - I knew the switches were dead because I couldn't enter the EKA the first time I got locked out. This forced me to buy a Nanocom (which I don't regret) but now there's a new door lock which even has superlocking.

Then when we were scratching our heads and watching the EAS go up and down, we realised that it was still going up and down with the passenger door open. Duh.. shouldn't be doing that! Another door lock solved the problem, there's something eating microswitches round here :(

The EAS was a complete bastard. Marty was flicking through the circuit diagrams at ludicrous speed but the only thing that stood out on the Nanocom was that the Hand Brake on/off input was always showing ON. Weird. There wasn't any known reason why that would make my EAS only ever go up but it was definitely a fault so it was worth fixing. Frankly confidence in the vehicle was quite low. Driving at 70mph and finding yourself in High Centred mode is not very pleasant because the thing handles like a baby Giraffe on the first corner.

Marty narrowed the fault down to the Pink/Black wire which runs between the BECM and the EAS ECU. We were running short on time so Marty disconnected it and I tested it on the way back to sleep that night. It worked! For the first time in ages the Rangey dropped to Motorway height when it was meant to. The only downside was that without the handbrake signal, Access Mode isn't possible. We did toy with the idea of leaving it like that but neither of us would have been happy with an unsolved mystery.

The next day, when he started to trace the wire, he found the end of a self tapping screw coming up from underneath the vehicle into the wiring loom on the right hand side ahead of the BECM.
Great. Some soldering and shrink wrap later there were four wires repaired (including the handbrake wire) and full EAS was restored. RESULT! sadly we then wasted a couple of hours because of faulty LR manuals which indicated that the handbrake signal was still incorrect. I got to see inside my own BECM (which is a bit like watching your own open heart surgery) but eventually it was certain that the BECM was working fine.

That cost us the chance to have a go at the faulty blend motor, but by that time it was clear that I've got bigger problems behind the dash. The carpet under the drivers footwell is soaking and pink. Uh Oh. I guess that means the dash is coming out pretty sharpish* for a new heater core, so the blend motor and a sensor can wait till then. Hmmpph :(

In other bodging news, Marty took the chance to change some bulbs in the instrument cluster. The ABS and TC bulbs were fine.. just taped over by some previous MOT dodger. Great.

Then to top it, on the way back a new and expensive sounding noise appeared from underneath. It could be a CV joint... I should find out tomorrow.

But massive thanks to Marty for putting his brain to work on The Duchess, which is now a far more complete motor than it was before. I hope we'll be able to get one of his Audi heater cores in it some time, but I think I'd better investigate the running gear before taking any more motorway trips.

*sharpish is realistically a couple of months. Lets hope nothing goes badly wrong by then.

Nice one, amazing what can be done when two of you get your heads together. When you do change the heater matrix, I'll have the old one. I've got the brand new Nissens one that came from Amazon for the princely sum of £7.50 but, despite what someone said over on the other forum, I want to compare it with a genuine Land Rover one to make sure it really is the correct one.

Sure thing Richard. Also, guess who put the self tapper through the loom!

LPG installer?

Good work with the doors - presumably this means now if someone breaks in through either front door, the alarm will actually go off now :)

I need to replace my heater core and sort out the heater box too before winter - so if I get around to it first, if you want it Richard you're welcome to the old core!

I suggest you drop Simon an email telling him that you've been having random electrical problems for some time and finally found it was down to him. Could be a chuckle to see what he says.......

Any old core will do, I just need to compare the angle and position of the connection. It looks right but you can't really tell from pictures. Not even sure I need it, if I left the car for a few minutes in cold weather the windscreen would mist up above the demister outlets. That made me think there might be a slight leak from the heater core that was causing it.

Does it mist on the inside or out? I have a bit of air leakage to the demister vents - if the A/C is on and its quite humid outside, when stationary the glass actually cools to the point I have condensation on the outside. At first I thought it was actually misting up on the inside and thought the A/C had given up.

No idea, I always assumed it was on the inside as it cleared as soon as I started the engine but it could be on the outside.

Sloth wrote:

LPG installer?

Good work with the doors - presumably this means now if someone breaks in through either front door, the alarm will actually go off now :)

I need to replace my heater core and sort out the heater box too before winter - so if I get around to it first, if you want it Richard you're welcome to the old core!

Yes, not only will the alarm go off - but we've found that it is super paranoid. You can't disconnect the battery ever without the sounder going off. The old "power on/off disconnect within X seconds" doesn't work. This Range Rover is not for stealing.
That instant decision to hook the sounder up and see what happens is having consequences. There's only so much damping you can achieve with a towel :)

Ha!

I removed my battery backed sounder to replace it with a normal non-battery version for that reason. The nicad batteries are 18 years old now too, so I don't see them lasting much longer anyway! When they go, the sounder stops working completely.

It was nice to get a load of things off your list Morat!! Sorry we didn't get a chance to dig into the heater box/blend motor - but it will be easier to do for sure if it comes out to swap the heater core over, that's for sure.

Let me know if you want me to book a time at some point to do the heater matrix - or if you can get your guy locally to do it, then I am happy to supply the parts if you wish!

Not good on your new noise - hopefully it is just a CV or something easy(ish) like that... If it's any consolation... I'm putting the deposit down with V8 Developments today for my new short engine... Also dropped the spare set of heads I have off for pressure testing and machining at a local engineering place that does rover bits too... combined with some of the other parts I'm starting to look at - I should be ready to start assembling an engine come the middle of October when I next get back from work!