Why have you got to take it off? The wiring is one thing but if you are taking the whole lot off you'll need to plug the holes in the inlet manifold.

Bolt wrote:

Of course, in the latest cold snap, the Zebra strip connector on the HVAC controller has come asunder.
Gotta get one of those and repair the display. Small but satisfying little fixes!

Mine has done that too. We haven't had the same sort of cold weather that you have but it's been damp. Didn't use the car for a whole day and when I did half the segments were missing. After a few miles they all came back, but it just annoyed me so I'm going to have to do something about it.

davew wrote:

Richard: Surely the catches are only 'handed' by virtue of the microswitch ? Thought the micro was N/C if bonnet closed ?

They both have the cable entering from the RH side but the fixings are offset. So if you fitted one on the wrong side the cable would need to come in from the other side. No, switch is definitely closed when the bonnet is open. Mine died a few years ago and I assumed, like you, that I would need to put a short in the plug to turn the warning off. Did that and it stayed on all the time. Open is closed.

Switch is on the back of the RH bonnet catch but not on the slam panel, n the metalwork either side of the slam panel. Switch can work loose so it permanently shows the bonnet open but when open it is short circuit. If it is unplugged and the plug left dangling, it will never tell you the bonnet is open. You can't swap them side to side as the catches are handed. If the microswitch is removed from the latch but left connected, you will get a warning that the bonnet is open even when it isn't.

EAS will work if the bonnet is open or not, it is only the doors and tailgate that inhibit it.

You can exercise them without pulling the dash out (in fact you can change them without pulling the whole dash out). Take off the centre console side panels and undo the 4 screws holding the HEVAC in. Tilt it out at the top and it will then come out. Unplug the black connector to the blend motors (on the left, towards the back). If you look at that one you will see 3 sets of wires the same colour. The Black and Brown wires go to the actual motors, Left blend motor on pins 11 and 12, right blend motor on pins 9 and 10 and distribution motor on pins 6 and 16. If you use a 9V battery and connect it to those pairs of pins, you can power the motor from one end of the travel to the other. Connected one way round moves it one way, the other way round moves it the other way. You'll be able to hear them whirring away as they move and doing it a few times may be all you need to wake up the lazy ones.

A Thor will bring on the SRS light if it detects a fault but it will go out once the fault is cleared unlike the earlier GEMS which needs it to be reset with diagnostics even after the fault is cleared. Favourite fault with the Thor is the connector under one of the seats which gets disturbed whenever the seat is moved. Unplug, squirt with contact cleaner and plug back in is all that is normally needed.

Bolt wrote:

When Gilbert says virtually all.......He means they even allow Yanks! (we have P-38's here too!)

But only the sensible ones......

Spot on. It was formed as a few years ago when rr.net had the redneck Admin who ran it as if it was his own personal site and a number of us got banned for varying lengths of time for correcting him, having a sense of humour or causing a thread to drift off topic. This site was set up as a virtual pub, you come in, sit down and join in the chat and banter. Virtually all of us own P38's, are based in the UK and work on our own cars. So we don't take our car to the 'shop' to be bent over backwards and charged stupid amounts of money for very simple jobs. I got a lifetime ban from rr.net for sending PM's to UK based owners and suggesting they join here rather than there. Ironically, I registered a different username, kept my head down for a while and have since been made Admin on there in place of the previous. Some of my posts on there would have without a doubt got me a ban previously but oddly enough, nobody has ever reported any of my posts to the Admin (me)......

I'll also edit your post so the pictures show up.

You have something drawing around 535mA for 3 minutes but not continually but on and off every 1/2 second or so. That would suggest a flashing light or similar. With interior lights on, you've got 3A draw, lights go out and it drops 1.6A but with the mysterious flashing making it jump between 1.6 and 2.0A (or thereabouts) until the BeCM goes to sleep so it drops to 35mA but the flashing has now become a permanent 535mA draw until it switches off after a further minute. The only thing I can think of is the alarm system with it's flashing LED on top of the dash but that normally sorts itself out before the BeCM goes to sleep and wouldn't be enabled if all you did was shut the door and not lock it.

Mirafiori-Max wrote:

The cars I had until now mainly needed a set of spanners and a welder, but with this one I am staring at excel spreadsheets for hours...^^ Well, that´s evolution for you....

That's progress for you. I was at my trailer hire place today and they were quoting for a towbar fit to a Mazda. Apparently, you can't just tack the wiring onto the rear lights these days, you need a special programmable Canbus box and something as simple as probing a wire to see if it is live is enough to cause a fault requiring diagnostics to clear the fault.

Another, maybe not connected, thing is that when I open the driver (left) door, the inner light does not come on and the opening of the door is not recorded by the EAS ECU, so no inhibiting of function. But in the BECM Menu, I can see that the "Door ajar" switch is functioning properly. As far as I know the BECM send that signal to the EAS ECU....could that be related and point toward some kind of intermittent electrical problem or is that something else...?

If the light doesn't come on when you open the door, the door ajar switch isn't doing what it should irrespective of what the BeCM thinks.....

P.S. The forum response time seems extremely slow since yesterday or is that just me?

Yes, I've noticed that too. I'm using Firefox with the forum permanently open in one tab. If I hit the Firefox Refresh button, it takes about a minute for the page to refresh and show me if there are any new posts. However, if I click on Range Rover P38 at the top of the page, it refreshes instantly. I've emailed Gordon (the man that looks after the server and software side of things) and he is looking into it.

I think these https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/micro-switches/2945905 where the ones I bought. The tip of the actuator isn't quite as tall so mounting is going to be critical to make sure they operate when they should. That is the usual problem with the keyswitch, too much use of the key causes the pip, and the sliding bit of plastic that operates it, to wear so there isn't enough movement to cause it to operate.

Obviously the ones in the latch are made into a single block of 3 so you need three switches and a means to hold them together.

romanrob wrote:

As regards leaving these cars standing for any period of time...it takes less than a minute to pop the hood, remove the negative off the battery and slam lock the doors

There is a way of doing it if you don't mind a bit of faffing around. Open the bonnet, close all doors and tailgate and lock with the key (not with the remote). Disconnect battery negative and close the bonnet. When you want to reconnected it, unlock with the key, open bonnet, close the door and lock again with the key, reconnect the battery and unlock with the key before closing the bonnet. That way when you reconnect it, the car is in exactly the same state as it was when you disconnected it, doors all closed but bonnet open and locked with the key. I've done this on a couple of cars and the remote had stayed in sync, the windows had stayed set, EKA wasn't asked for but the radio had lost the stored stations. However, I can't be bothered to do that on the Ascot, if I go to it and find the battery has gone flat then I know I left it for too long.....

and they don't understand electric, they can't see it and it doesn't go up and down or round and round......

I'd very carefully check the fusebox. They do fail and if there are high resistance joints, they get worse as they warm up and the resistance rises so voltage falls.

davew wrote:

As for your drain itself (in my case/P38) after some weeks this can happen - and I have assumed, particularly in winter, that it is probably caused by a combination of condensation/muck/road salt somewhere (!) Not very helpful I know but I fitted a small LED voltmeter on the dash a while ago to keep an eye on things... Much cheaper than a(nother) new battery !

( Before someone comments I eliminated the usual alarm/EAS/BECM drain 'culprits' years ago too )

In the case of my Ascot, and probably most others where a car is left not being used, it is likely down to a combination of multiple things. First there is the 25-30mA draw that the alarm and other permanently powered items cause but as well as the EAS waking up every 6 hours or so, as it still has the original first generation receiver the BeCM will wake up for 2 minutes every time I lock or unlock my car or the missus locks or unlocks hers. Under the circumstances, I don't think 4-5 weeks is too bad. A voltmeter wouldn't be a lot of help as that would involve checking it and the only time the Ascot gets looked at is when I know it is going to be used. If the battery is flat at that time I'll either stick the charger on it for a few hours or, if I need to use it urgently, jump start it off one of the others. I've thought about putting a solar trickle charger on it but the only real advantage of that would be to save me having to enter the EKA, reset the windows and sunroof and, most annoyingly, guess how much LPG it still has left in it as the trip meter will have dropped to 0.0 so I've no idea how far it has been driven since it was last filled!

Hmm, a weird one. Looking at the diagram I can't see how the fuse blowing could cause a drain. A problem with the starter solenoid or starter relay could blow the fuse but once the fuse has blown, where is the power being drained coming from?

i suspect your Hankook will recover. There's an MF31-750 on the Ascot and that will go flat after about 4 or 5 weeks, which, as it is only used as and when we need two, is quite common. I stick the charger on it, put the EKA in, reset the windows and all is fine.

I'm on the opposite side of the country for you otherwise I'd be happy to put the Nano on to check for you. You can check the blend motors manually though. With the engine warm, put both sides on 20C and check that air out of both sides is the same temperature (there may be a slight difference but not by much), then change one side to Hi and confirm it changes on that side, change it to Lo and check again. Then put that side back to 20C and repeat the same test on the other side. If the temperature changes on both sides as you expect it to, then try changing where the air is going and confirm that when set to windscreen it blows on the windscreen and so on. A good final test it to poke the Prog button. That should turn on the front and rear screen heaters, put the fans on high speed, both sides on Hi (hot), engage the AC compressor and direct the airflow to the screen.

If either side doesn't change temperature when you tell it to, then there is a problem with that blend motor. When you first turn on the ignition, they are driven from one end of their travel to the other and the feedback from each motor is checked to confirm it is doing what it should do. There are two problems that affect them. Either the flaps that the blend motor move have seized so the motors stall, or the feedback pots inside them have worn out so the HEVAC doesn't see the movement. First though, identify what the problem is. Bear in mind that if the HEVAC detects a fault with one motor in the self test, it will not try to move that motor again. Sods law says that if a motor sticks at one end of the travel or the other it will invariably stick at full hot in summer and full cold in winter!

Admittedly with the Nanocom you can drive the motors from one end of the travel to the other and monitor the feedback but that still doesn't tell you if the motor is moving and there is no feedback or if it isn't moving. In both cases, you need to get a few panels off so you can see the motors and check if they are actually moving or not.

Doors will lock when the latch is unplugged and should unlock again when you plug it back in. But only the once, so doing a dancing lock would suggest your repair wasn't 100% successful. I bought some microswitches of the correct size from RS Components but found that the standard mounting holes do not line up with the locating pegs on the latch. I understand Marty uses thin threaded rod through the holes and drills the latch body to mount them.

Found the Convert from Text command and that got each reading into separate columns but can't then convert that into graphs. I thought it was because some columns had words rather than numbers in them (On or Off for the compressor, Standard or Low for target height, etc) so I hid all columns with non-numeric entries. Still can't get a graph to appear though, I just get a box appear with nothing in it.

Going off at a slight tangent but having consulted my Excel expert (the missus), I now know why I can't get the data to convert to graphs. The csv file from the Nanocom is semi-colon delimited which my version of Excel (Office Pro 2013) doesn't recognise so puts each line in the same column rather than splitting each figure into a separate column. I seem to recall that the previous versions of Excel gave the option of telling it what the delimiter was but neither of us can find out how to do it in this version.

That's better. For some reason it is only showing 2 of the 4 target heights, but they are as you would expect, straight lines of varying height depending on what height it is supposed to be aiming for. But, although there is going to be movement up and down on the actual heights as you drive, I would have expected them to roughly follow the target heights with a bit of variation either side of target. The first graph shows something like I would expect, the others look completely wrong.