The big red beast stopped running early this afternoon on the way up to the supermarket. Drifting downhill towards the carpark I got a "boing" and he came to a halt. Nothing on the display, all the usual warning lights associated with ignition on but he wouldn't restart. Turning over on the starter over was a bit lumpy as if he might have been getting the odd almost fire. Would have expected it to spin a bit faster given the battery was fully up to charge. Temperature gauge about half way towards normal running. I'd been out earlier and he hadn't fully cooled down before going off again. Petrol tank almost full.

As it seemed almost certain to be electrical I spent five minutes wobbling fuses, pulling out and reseating appropriate relays et al before trying to start up again. Fired up just fine in the usual almost instant manner.

Started fine three more times.

Once to come home and twice whilst doing the Nanocom tests. No fault codes on the Nanocom and outputs seemed reasonable. After reminding myself where Encoder Tooth counts lived on the Nanocom menus I tried one more start.

No go.

Did the pull relays and fuses thing again squirting with contact cleaner before re-installation. Verified that the fuel pump relay was working fine and had low resistance on the contacts when made. Also did the female contact wobble with a screwdriver test for the relay female contacts to, hopefully, verify there was no circuit board problem. All seemed solid. The only issue I found was worn plating on some of the relay male prongs. Shouldn't make any difference but I polished things up.

After retrieving the fuse puller from under the battery where it had hidden after "someone" dropped it I tried starting again. Instant fire up. Temperature still a little shy of normal running level.

So have I fixed it or is there something lurking waiting to be activated by Lawyer Murphy and the Gremlin Squad at a seriously inconvenient time.

Tempted to just replace the fuel pump relay on principle and put a genuine crank position sensor into stock. But he has only done 96,000 miles so it seems a bit early for CPS problems.

Any ideas as to what's really going on.

Clive

Crank position sensor will fail when it gets hot and won't give any fault codes as the ECU doesn't know the engine is turning. Leave it to cool down, or give it a squirt of something to cool it down and it will fire up as normal. Until it gets hot again......

Agreed symptoms are pretty much what you'd expect from a failing CPS but in this case the engine never really got hot and never really got cold. Good blast of compressed air or splash of water to cool things down was going to be the next test if the pull and clean contacts hadn't worked.

I guess £80 odd to put a new genuine Bosch one into stock so I can change it when convenient is wise.

Clive

Or a can of freezer spray or a CO2 fire extinguisher. Either of them will cool it down......

After mine failed, and stupidly gave 30 euros to the wreck truck for something I have been thinking in years to replace, I recommend to plan to do it a specific intervals.
By the way, mine failed when getting warm, not hot. And the cooling was not necessary overnight, after a couple hours would start again - which was what tricked me ...

That settles it.

Mine is getting changed as soon as the new Bosch one arrives from Island 4x4. Sent off Thursday so won't be long.

When you have age and heat related failures it can be hard to tell if its the number of cold - hot - cold cycles or heat soak time that does the damage. I'm guessing its cycles rather than soak or Richard would be on a regular change regime.

Clive

Clive603 wrote:

Richard would be on a regular change regime.

True. I changed mine as a precautionary measure when the engine was rebuilt. So the original one (at least I'm assuming it was the original) was still good after 285k and the replacement has been in there for a further 181k. The original has been in the boot ever since just in case.....

Well that was a battle.

Changing the sensor went easily enough apart from it being at exactly the wrong height for my arms whilst lying underneath and the fixings being largely invisible.

Its unhooking the connector that needs a health warning. Experience with setting the points and ignition timing on Reliant and Jensen Healy is desirable. Impossible to see and attempts to feel what is going on risks cutting your wrists on the corroded edges of the exhaust pipe shielding. Significant scrapes but not too much blood drawn. Ended up pulling the nearside front wheel off and removing the arch liner. With a deal of contorting and careful shining of my favourite baby LED torch I was eventually able to glimpse enough to work out how the "detach from bracket" bit worked so a bit of careful poking prodding and levering with a screwdriver, mostly blind, got it off. By then we were cooking with gas. Fortunately re-assembly went just like it should.

Lots of oil underneath in that area and the sensor itself was well oiled so I guess I'm in for a rear crankshaft oil seal fix soon.

The airbag didn't look good either so I guess that after 10 years its just aged out. Supplies seem to be a bit limited right now. Island only have rears and there seem to be two breeds of Dunlop on the other supplier listings plain Dunlop and PRDunlop.

Clive

Try setting the timing on a TVR 280i, that's a real pain too. I've just got a pair of front Dunlops from Craddocks. Mine are starting to look a bit iffy but have been there for 11 years and about 230k miles. I initially ordered them from LRDirect who accepted the order then refunded me as they were out of stock. Craddocks showed them as in stock at around the same price so I ordered from them. After a week of hearing nothing I rang them to be told that they were expecting a delivery and could either send them as soon as they arrived or give me a refund. I decided to wait and they turned up a couple of weeks ago. Genuine Dunlop, with a date code of week 48, 2021. At the same time I ordered rears from Island and they arrived in the usual couple of days. The ones on it had been fitted as soon as I got the car so they were a couple of years and 40k older and had definitely seen better days so were fitted immediately. The fronts can wait until I've nothing better to do (or it starts dropping overnight).

My gems went thru 4 or 5 fake crank sensors. Each time they failed it would idle but not rev past about 1500rpm.

The wiring plug on mine was just dangling, presumably the previous owner!

Eventually sourced a new old stock genuine part from eBay and it's been fine since.

Airbags: I recently bought rears from Island, they were marked 2016. Interesting fact, they replaced the ones that had "dis-soldered" themselves (the rubber from the plastic cup, that is), that were also marked 2016 ... and I bought them "in" 2016.
Oh well.
Maybe we will all move to normal springs after supplies run out, and live happily ever-after :-))))

Just checked the ones I bought from Island recently and they are marked 2035, so week 35, 2020. If yours are marked 2016, that is week 16 2020, not year 2016.
leolito wrote:

Maybe we will all move to normal springs after supplies run out, and live happily ever-after :-))))

Now go wash your mouth out with soap and water.....

Given you can still get leaf springs for Series Land Rovers, I don't see them being completely unavailable. Dunlop ones maybe, but hopefully others will still be available. If they are stored in good conditions them being a few years old shouldn't be an issue either.