SLROC Forum

Hiya,

My Landy (2003 Defender 110)  started to behave funny:

While driving started to misfire with the coil and management lights flashing up for a second. Then they have disappeared and the car drove okay. It did that once every minute - to begin with. When I continued driving, after a while, it became more frequent until it did that all the time and I couldn't drive it really as it was more misfiring than running properly.

Then I turned it off, wanted to turn it back on but the fuel pump and glow plugs wouldn't come on and there was a buzz in the fuse box.

I have moved the relays and the fuses in the box and it has become okay for a few minutes, but then the whole thing started all over again. Now moving the relays/fuses don't help either.

Has anyone of you run into something like this?

It is a bit annoying, seems to be electrical but the misfiring can be the engine as well.
Anyhow, if you think it's easy to fix I'll do it myself.

Any relevant input is welcome.

Cheers,
Mik

Interesting news:

I got the Landy towed to a garage for diagnostics. Before towing I wanted to start it up again but I got all kinds of flickering lights on the dashboard, including gauges dashing back and forth. Somehow it shook back into normal while towing, started and run as normal again. (Which is good because I could drive back home.)

Nevertheless I got proper diagnostics done and two codes were logged: 
"injector 5 failure, intermittent",
"glow plug light failure, intermittent".

The mechanic said that it most probably is some contact problem but we couldn't reproduce the problem.

Is it possible that we have earth fault somewhere?
If so which earth points would you suspect? (injection and dashboard are involved.)

Hope it is that simple. What do you think?
(With some advice I am sure I can fix earth fault myself.)

It does sound like an earth fault. You can't do any harm going round tightening all the connections and checking for scuffed wires.

Let us know if you find anything. Good luck.

                           Pete.

Well, I had guests coming Wednesday and I needed the Landy up and running - wanted to show off   

So I started to do/fix pretty much everything I could think of.
I have cleaned the earth points (battery to chassis and transfer box) and just to make sure I have pulled an extra earth wire as well. I have pulled one from the battery to the ECU earth and one from the chassis to the bulkhead as well.

As I was working under the drivers seat I have disconnected the ECU and found oil in the red plug. It has pointed me to the injector harness: It becomes oily when the injector harness is getting old and not sealing properly. (Oil is seeping down in the loom along the wires.) But an old and brittle injector harness can also cause the misfiring I had. Before popping the rocker cover I have double checked my suspicion with Andy White (White's Garage Washington Lane Edinburgh) and he has confirmed that it's most probably a broken wire in the injector harness.

I have changed both (harness and gasket), sealed the loom with some extra silicone, wrapped up the earth wiring and it has solved the problem completely. I drove about 100 miles with my guests since and it's running like a dream.   

It's worth to note that my temp gauge was fluctuating previously, was moving slightly up and down all the time (which is caused by bad earth connection). Now it is stable and reading as it should.     

Hope this story helps

Good to see  your up and running again.
Andy whites a good lad.

                      Pete.

Aye, what a relief