I guess I've done the usual and missed the wood from the trees...

Clamped the lines to the alternator but no current showing there.

I pulled every fuse in the engine bay, no difference.

Eventually I pulled maxi fuse 1 and 4 together and it dropped to 0. (1 or 4 separately didn't change the output)

Realised these are probably powering the internal electronics. Opened the door to start going thru fuses at the seat which obviously kicks the becm on and while sitting there waiting for it to time out I realised the passenger rear interior light button was pushed in...

Pressed it... Waited 5 minutes for everything to go to sleep... 0.05a. Hooray!

So I guess that explains the rapid drain, one of the kids has presumably pressed it on Thursday and it's stayed on overnight.

Also suggests that if 0.35a for 15 hours is enough to flatten the battery that the battery is very likely nearing end of life

I have a load tester somewhere, so next job is test the spares I have to see if any of them are actually decent and then swap it out. On holiday next week though so it will wait till I'm back!

Ok this is becoming a real problem.

Over the last few months the battery has run flat many times. If its left for a week or two its almost certainly going to be flat. But on top of that there are weird exceptions.

For instance this tuesday i jumped into it to goto the nursery, it had sat for about a week, and it failed to start. I jump started it and it drove to nursery (2 miles away), it restarted fine after nursery, then drove to the school (1 mile from nursery) and it restarted fine after the school, then i drove it home. I meant to put the battery on charge to give it a proper top up, but forgot. The wife got in on thursday and said it started fine. She drove it about town a fair bit on thursday no bother. Then on friday morning it was completely dead.

Put the battery on charge on friday evening (current limited bench supply, set to 14.4v 10A) and left it for 24hrs. When i checked it on saturday evening the PSU was showing it was still pulling 0.5A so i left it overnight. In the morning, still pulling 0.5A. So i disconnected the charger and dug out the clamp meter for some probing.

Immediately after opening a door, its pulling over 3A, quickly drops to ~2A. Shut the door and it drops to slightly under 1A for maybe 5 minutes or so, then drops to 0.35A and then just sits there. Even half an hour later its still drawing 0.35A.

0.35A feels pretty high to me? Certainly enough to flatten the battery over a week or two? Thats 8.4AH over a 24hrs period. Battery notionally holds 80ah, so 10 days is enough to completely flatten the battery with that load, and ofcourse it'll probably fail to start before its fully empty, and its probably no longer holding 80ah anyway.

But it doesnt feel like "BECM staying awake"? The BECM seems to draw about an amp when its awake, and you can see that after opening/closing a door, but it fairly quickly drops down to this 0.35A reading.

Anyone else measured what the car draws when off as a comparison?

Any ideas what might be going on? The battery itself might by dying, but that wouldnt explain this continuous load, and i dont want to replace the battery and kill the new one by continually running it flat!

It also doesnt explain why sometimes it lasts a week, and other times it doesnt even last 12 hours!

Gilbertd wrote:

I get sent a Parkers email newsletter every so often and I don't know how, or indeed why, people pay the sort of money these deals cost. £400 a month and up unless you are happy to drive something marginally larger than, and about as useful as, a shopping trolley. £400 is about what I'm spending at the moment replacing my gearbox but that is, hopefully, a once in a lifetime expense. If I was to run on petrol and it was £2 a litre, £400 would buy me 200 litres, or 44 gallons. Even at 20mpg, that's still enough for 880 miles. Not that it would matter as most of these deals seem to be capped at 8,000 miles a year. I honestly don't understand it, if I was spending that kind of money every month I'd expect to be able to drive as often and as far as I wanted.

How many people are prepared to jack up their car and change a brake pad, never mind a gearbox? For most people, a car is essentially an appliance. They want to get in, drive to where they're going with minimal faff. If it breaks, its an expensive trip to the garage, so you want to avoid that (typically by purchasing one new enough, from a main dealer, with a warranty). The mileage cap is almost always adjustable, it just costs more. You are essentially paying the cost of depreciation, and a higher mileage vehicle is worth less at the end of the term and thus costs more over the term. The advertisements want to paint things in the best light possible so clearly pick a lower figure (i've seen many showing 5k!). That said, 8000miles a year is apparently about average in the UK.

If you cant afford a newish car on finance, you buy something old/cheap, but then get absolutely reamed on repair costs. I've known quite a few folk who have run older cars, got hit by a £1000 "MOT" and then went and sold it and leased something new. Costs are fixed and predictable etc etc.

The middle ground is even worse. you buy a 6-8 year old used car for 15 or 20 grand. Its now worth enough that you cant readily bin it if it goes wrong, but its old enough that it inevitably will go wrong, often in an expensive manner.

Morat wrote:

I'd probably be very happy to drive a Tesla and I was interested enough until I priced one up. Eeek. Now I can't see the point. I just don't do enough miles to save any money. Once I start my new job which is 100% WFH then there will be no point at all! If I was one of those people who leases a car and changes every three years because I can't be seen dead in last year's model... then maybe.

I mean some people do just finance a car, be it new or nearly new, every few years. And if your already in that cycle, then EV clearly has massive benefits.

I wasnt in that cycle, but got my first EV ~5 years ago when i realised the money i was spending in diesel every month would pay for the car. Total monthly spend went up very slightly, but i went from driving a 11 year old BMW and having to deal with repairs and maintenance myself, to driving a 0 year old Merc with new everything and a warranty.

A lot of this stuff seems shabolically managed at a government level

A colleague moved into a newbuild last year. The developer was "forced" to install a EV charging point (presumably by the local authority as part of the planning permission?) so had fitted a single 13A socket in the garage with a dymo label stuck on it saying "EV Charging". Personally, fitting the charger itself is unneccesary, but what should be mandated is the circuit and cabling be installed and routed from the DB to the front of the house. That way if someone gets an EV, its a simple job to affix the box to the wall and energise the circuit, rather than having to start bashing holes in the house to run cables.

The government seem to have made the big shiney policy announcement banning ICE, but havent actually tackled the proper day to day stuff that needs to happen. They should have been implementing policy changes years ago around ensuring charging points are installed in all new developments, be that residential or commercial. Some LA's have taken it upon themselves to enforce rules on a somewhat adhoc basis, but it really needs a proper joined up view. Motorway charging provision is also a complete mess, because they allowed Ecotricity to sew up the whole MSA network with exclusivity agreements, and then not put any actual effort into expanding the network. Its finally getting better now as Ecotricity sold up to Gridserve (which in hindsight was presumably the plan all along, get everyone locked in, use money from Nissan and the EU to install the first few chargers, and then sit on it until someones going to buy it out for the big bucks) but they're now behind the curve in effect as sales are exploding and the network hasnt changed in about 5 years.

is there a seperate relay for the pump? worth swapping that to try just incase?

Gilbertd wrote:

In the UK it's a technical term spelt phuqued.

From the clattering I suspect the torque converter has broken up internally. It's too much of a 'tinny' sound to be gearbox internals.

broken flex plate? The 4.6 engine i bought from the wrecker has its flex plate broken into several bits.

The only places round here that still have it are Asda and Morrisons. My commute is 40miles from Glenrothes to Loanhead, and i pass one station in Kirkcaldy (Asda) which has LPG. Even Edinburgh, big city has only 2 locations with LPG and they're both on the east side of the city miles away from where i travel and are both charging £1 a litre.

At least the nearest asda is 73p. Thing is for me the P38 is a third car, used occasionally, and even then its quite a concern. For those using it daily, bad times!

Charging at a petrol station is definitely a bit crap, but on the flip side, its better than not charging and ending up on an AA lorry. I think in the ~5 years i've driven EV's i've charged at a petrol station two or three times, but in all cases it was critical because there was nothing else nearby. One time i rolled in with the battery showing literally 0%, having had a failed charge at another unit 10 miles down the road.

It feels like a stop-gap, however all of the big petrol providers seem to be looking at it, i guess they dont want to be left behind and want to get a foot in the door. It will certainly help EV adoption if you know that any of the many filling stations around also have charging. MFG has setup a few EV only sites, but they've also rolled out a lot of "hubs" with 6/8/12 chargers at existing petrol sites, which as an EV driver is far more useful than the usual effort of one or two units.

Charging is slow enough, without turning up and finding a queue for the one charger (or worse, its broken). So multiple unit sites are a huge draw for an EV owner.

Its very likely a huge profit source for their shop too, as if your sat there for 15-30mins charging the chances are your going to pop in for a coffee or a drink or whatever. Generally on a longer trip i will try to align the charging stop with natural breaks like lunch, so there will be some capturing of that market too.

Motorway services ofcourse are a different story, but the provision at most motorway services in the UK is utter garbage, so a lot of these charging hubs at normal petrol stations are popping up near motorways, to catch the folks who need to charge and want to avoid the motorway hubs as they're generally under-specified (often only 2 or 3 chargers) and massively busy.

As for the LPG side, its certainly a concern, availability has dropped significantly over the last few years. However i suspect its just never been that popular here in the UK unlike Europe, and with the move towards direct injection, it stopped being viable for new vehicles probably 10 years ago. Thus we're basically in a run-out period where its only used by older cars which are as time passes simply disappearing from the roads. Add in the EV side going the other way, and with limited space, as a business you can see its a very clear choice... Keep the large bulky LPG tanks for the 3 campervans and 4 V8 SUV's a day, with all the associated costs of maintenance and upkeep, to sell fuel with wafer thin margins... Or remove them, install some EV chargers where your making not only a bigger margin on the fuel itself, but you've got a nice captive audience for your shop.

I'm pretty sure the '00 door cards i recently bought just said "wood" for the trim type on the label on the back of them. I also found my dash trim which looked totally different to the door trims had infact just been bleached by the sun, as when i removed it the area around the glove box button trim was the original dark color.

I've got a set of four door inserts if your needing a set as i transferred over my wrapped ones.

On mine you dont even need a key to put the gearbox into neutral.... Just pull the shifter into N.

Steering lock will be your main issue. At the most basic, you can probably remove the lock barrel to disengage the lock.

The codes may have been generated at different operational sites.

For instance one set generated at idle and another while cruising or while under accelleration.

It also depends on the complexity of the ECU itself. Some management systems have fairly sophisticated models of the engine within their code, and so they know that for a given operating condition (say 2000rpm, wide open throttle) the MAF readings should be within say a 10 or 20% window, and if they stray outside this, they will generate a code. Other systems are REALLY dumb by comparison and just believe anything certain sensors say.

There was a thread created for that, its further down the first page!

Because warping is usually pad deposits, heavy braking can clear it up, sometimes. it may return depending on many factors.

Thats possible, however i'm pretty happy with the data i have managed to collect so far.

Just need to get some time to work on it, been busy with family stuff and work so havent got near it for a couple weeks. I did get some 5 lobe torx bits to remove the sensor from the TT MAF i bought (I bought a slightly different - larger - unit from ebay to my original ones, as it was a better fit for the factory intake pipe), as for some reason the housing is disgustingly dirty and needs a bath. Might also swap the sensor element for a spare one given the state of the whole thing.

Ok so its similar to the Audi one then (not a huge surprise as they're both made by Valeo!)

I think the Audi version you can adjust the fan speed and it acts like an offset rather than becoming fully static, which is probably the main difference i'm noticing.

Thanks. I sanded the three metal fingers it looked a bit oxidised. Also rubbed the tracks with the sand paper but that didn't seem to do much.

Both the fan control, and the temp up/down switches seemed intermittent. I couldn't see anything wrong with the rubber membrane switches though, not sure how to proceed there.

I ordered a bulb kit with the replacement zebra strip, as while the display worked okay, I guess I should just sort it all while it's apart.

As for auto mode, I find different cars deal with that differently. In my A4 for instance full auto seems to make strange choices on where the air goes, but if you manually select say footwell and windscreen, the fan control remains on auto and you've only changed the direction.

I've not played with the range rover too much, but from a cursory look it seems if you adjust anything knocking it out of auto, the fan then ends up static. I'll experiment a little more with auto mode. However I do often find it will make decisions that are annoying. For example on a cold day the A4 will run the fan at a low speed until the engine warms up. But then it'll run the fan at full bore to get the cabin up to temperature which I find a bit too much.

ABS and warped disks feel quite different...

Warped disks is a much lower frequency and is generally a "smoother" pulse or judder. It also varies with speed.

ABS is a very high frequency "vibration" and often the pedal will feel very odd as the pump takes control.

I've had both on the P38. ABS engagement due to a front sensor with too large an air-gap, but it was very intermittent. It also felt bloody scary, as it would effectively turn the brakes off trying to get the wheel to unlock, which ofcourse never happened as it wasnt locked in the first place. Eventually it started producing a code for the front right sensor, and a small tap fixed the issue.

If its warped disks, you can sometimes tell by looking on the disk surface for a pad "imprint". Looks like the outline of a brake pad left on the surface of the disk. Warping is almost always caused by "user error". If the disks are hot (from lots of braking) and the car is then stopped with the brake pedal held on, the heat causes pad material to transfer to the disk surface. Sometimes this material is then simply worn off again, but depending on the exact thermal cycles etc, sometimes it doesnt go away and interacts with the steel to form an extra hard deposit. Over time the disk around the deposit wears away, but the deposit doesnt, creating a high spot (and we're talking fractions of a mm here) which is what then causes the vibration.

I've pulled out the HEVAC control to remove the nasty sticky on wood trim from the front of it. When its out i want to see if i can fix the unresponsive buttons...

Is there a known fix? i was guessing i just pull it apart and try cleaning up the contacts?

I should probably have ordered a bulb kit while it was out 🤔

Gilbertd wrote:

The ignition switched supply comes from fuse 23 which also powers the airbag system so it should wake it up.

The odo sync in the Nanocom forces them to be the same but if you swap another one in, you will get an Odo Error on the message centre every time you start the car.

Just to confirm, are you saying if i swap, i'll get odo error until i do the sync? Or forever more?