Windscreen washer level low seems to cause wider electronic faults

[coolum]

I am still working through the process as isolating these kinds of Electronic glitches take time of course.

Just wondering if anyone could suggest that it is complete hogwash or wether its a possibility.

So when driving from cold the car usually performs OK and then at some intermittent point - usually after a kilometre or two, all hell breaks loose with the following errors:

• Automatic gearbox goes into F mode and stays in 3rd gear.
• Hand brake light comes on
• Low windscreen fluid level warning comes on

not necessarily in that order.
I have to stop and turn off the car and wait a minute the reboot turn back on
and then it may fail again once or twice then
it will be fine and can drive for the rest of the day without error car runs perfect.

On days when the windscreen bottle is full it does not seem to happen, but I am still trying to confirm this is the case.

Could this be imagination / crackpot theory or could the sensor cause feedback of some sort to initiate the other errors.

• The Handbrake assembly is only a year or 2 old and
• same with new auto box installed and recently serviced due to oil leak with new steel pan / filter installed. So I am confident the errors are electronic not real physical faults.

I have heard of similar issues when a tail light globe is out so I am not sure if this could do the same sort of glitch.

I look forward to any input from those who would like to post a reply

Cheers
Steve .

[BradC]

This is where you need diagnostic codes from the various ECUs. The washer bottle alarm is hard wired into the dash (same as brake fluid and oil pressure). There should be no interactions with the remainder of the systems.

The behaviour you are seeing is characteristic of an issue with the CAN bus, either hardware or cascade failure from another ECU registering a fault and ceasing to chat to the remainder of the bus listeners.

Codes. Need codes.

[coolum]

I don't have a diagnostic tool at this stage.
I will take up to British offroad after Holidays and get them to read any remaining issues logged?..
BTW the engine management light is also on when this happens
Seems crazy for sure ..
I will see what codes are shown when the blokes check it out next week or the week after.
sure give me the ****s when it fails though .. but then again I know its well maintained so its all false readings and just a glitch easily resolved by turning off and on again (a few times)
Thanks for your help Brad.
steve

[ytt105]

Have you changed the brake light switch? That's the first thing to do on a D3 when you have multiple weird errors.
Also, try a hard reset.

Regards
Trevor

[Tombie]

As mentioned above, really need the codes...
Few things to consider / check -

Check brake light globes are working
Potentially Brake light switch
Check battery terminals are clean and tight
And how old is your battery?