Thread: Disco wouldn't start and then fault messages.

An interesting procedure occurred at the Cairns LR Dealer this morning. Couldn't start the car to get it off the tray truck (needed to put it into neutral and disengage park brake) so a very smart technician came over, sat in the drivers seat, pulled off the cup holder thingy in front of the storage console, reached under the dash just in front of the steering column and then pressed a couple of buttons that I didn't know were there and - hey presto! The engine started and no fault messages showed on the dash panel.
Went into the workshop and now the wait to see why/what has gone wrong, but they now know exactly what did go wrong.

Originally Posted by pprass

An interesting procedure occurred at the Cairns LR Dealer this morning. Couldn't start the car to get it off the tray truck (needed to put it into neutral and disengage park brake) so a very smart technician came over, sat in the drivers seat, pulled off the cup holder thingy in front of the storage console, reached under the dash just in front of the steering column and then pressed a couple of buttons that I didn't know were there and - hey presto! The engine started and no fault messages showed on the dash panel.

There is a red release lever under the cupholder that shifts transmission from Park to Neutral. There is also a wire loop on a white base that releases the park brake. It's just to the left of the red lever handle in the photo below.

Under the steering column is the spot where you hold the fob if it's playing up and not starting. But I've never heard of pressing buttons under the steering column. Perhaps he just held the fob up to the steering column?

And agreed, 2 years doesn't seem very old for a battery and I wouldn't normally consider replacement prior to a trip if it's only 2 years old.

Regards,
Scott

I bet 50cents it is an earthing issue on a module somewhere under the car.

Similar thing happened to me awhile back.

Good luck with it.

Not uncommon for these vehicles to kill a battery in under 2 years.

The hand brake release is documented in the Owners Manual and the "steering column" bit was to hold the fob near the transceiver to enable starting.

The fact it kicked over is more a sign of the battery resting a while... no heat....

Well good news for us - the fault was detected and rectified by the mechanics at Trinity Landrover in Cairns and it was a minuscule defect that I wouldn't have detected and it was nothing to do with the battery itself - but electrically related.
Have a look at the attached photo (hope it is big enough) and see if you can spot what caused the faults, the loss of power and the non starting issues - well actually there was another force causing the problem you should see in the photo, but I didn't find out what that was.

I would not have thought that such a small issue would have caused us to arrange a tow truck to travel 580 kms from the top of the Cape York to Cairns in a tray truck that felt like it was wrecking our van as it towed that as well over very rough tracks - those corrugations are getting worse every day!

Here is what the mechanic wrote:
"Disconnected engine harness to body harness - still got short
Disconnected C2054A from C20535 - still got short.
Disconnected C0868 from C0903 now gone to open circuit.
Removed centre console (I hate it when they do that sort of surgery to our car ) checked harness, found harness to be shorting to earth near gear selector module C3521-5 yellow brown."

Wow! Some good diagnostic work on part of the tech.

Yellow/brown and yellow/black are HS can-bus wires so a short to earth on either prevents communication. Better/safer than a high current short to earth though.

Do i get the 50cents?

Good to read your car is good to go.

p.s. It took 3 visits back to LR to find my fault