Thread: Disco not starting / immobiliser issue

1998 D1 3.9L V8. petrol/gas.

Occasionally my disco will fail to start. will crank all day but not fire.
As it is very intermittant and i'm normally by myself when it happens, and on my way to work; fault finding is difficult.
It would not continue to fault either, once started it could be fine for weeks. Sometimes i'd leave it, come back with tools to check it a bit later or that night etc and it would start fine.
Eventually found that when it faults there is no spark, specifically no power to the coil.

Reading up everything points to the 'spider' and a repair or the bypass loom is the fix, however i pulled out the radio and had a look around and its not there. Seems the later d1s dont have the spider.

when it wouldn;t start i could sometimes get it to start by locking it waiting for it to arm, then unlocking it, sometimes i would have to do it a few times. when it fails to start the alarm doesn;t go off, and it will always crank so the starter circuit isn;t immobilised, seems the ign circuit is where the issue lies.


Has anyone had any luck with an immobilser bypass on discos WITHOUT the spider?

i think the immobiliser module is ment to be behind the glovebox somewhere but will have to confirm.

My 95 model d1 v8 petrol has issues from time to time with that very module behind the glove box. When mine cracks the sads it won't crank though and flashes a car shape/spanner light in the instrument cluster. it only inhibits the starter though.......I have a wreck 97 model and the module behind the glove box looks totally different and it didn't come with any keyless entry fobs, assuming it had keyless entry? I note this as even the RAVE manual doesn't shed light on the variations and I had trouble putting an emergency bypass switch in the 95 model as the circuits didn't match the car 100%. Both cars have the spider bypass loom in them. This probably doesn't help you much though.....I did have an issue with mine with a leaking injector that made the car nearly impossible to start when warm (not hot start or cold start) that had a similar symptom of cranking all day without starting (flooded)