JT’s fleet: Auction Purchase L322…

[J-T]

ARSES

Seems I spoke too soon on this BCM swap. When I got in it for the first time today I had heavy steering again on 1st startup, had to cycle it through ignition about 3 times to get it normal again. Once I’d washed it which was the reason for me moving it, I read the codes again. Here’s what the BCM is saying:

BPM-Body Processor v10

• 0xA2 Passenger door mirror heater: open circuit 
• 0x56 Body Control Unit upper tailgate unlock relay short to battery 
• 0x51 Body Control Unit unlock relay short to ground 
• 0x81 Servo-valve or connections short circuit 
• 0x80 Servo-valve or connections open circuit

Door mirror heater is correct. The unlock relays may be correct as I’m pretty sure it didn’t unlock the upper tailgate on 1st attempt yesterday. The servo valve faults relate to the servotronic valve on the power steering rack which alters how much assistance it provides.

This is progress of sorts, as despite having that fault, previously I wasn’t getting that code. I still think this is an electrical/BCM fault rather than the servotronic valve due to it being intermittent and when you start trawling the forums there are quite a few accounts of people swapping the valve and it not solving the problem and it turning out to be a bad BCM. It’s possible that the ‘new’ BCM is also duff. As when I put the ‘new’ one on, it did solve some of the previous faults, such as I had a rear window that would not work but had no fault with the motor and it was giving a fault of short to ground - that’s working now with no fault.

Im half minded to try another; these modules are all over 20 years old now and didn’t have the greatest rep when new so it could just be another dodgy one. It’s just a bit difficult finding the correct part number at reasonable cost to try something that may not work. I’m off to trawl eBay again.

[J-T]

Well I found another matching part number BCM online but I didn’t really want to buy another 20 odd year old part. I checked with Land Rover but predictably, new ones are NLA.

I checked the online parts catalogue; the part number of the original unit was YWC000922, but checking by chassis number, this was superseded by YWC000923. There were some of these on eBay but they were all in Eastern Europe at silly cost, over £250. Hidden amongst them was one in the UK that claimed to be a new old stock part, still in its box. I messaged the guy who has confirmed it’s never been fitted, it was ordered and never used, so I made him an offer and I’ve bought it. I hope it bloody works as it was £220 but I’ve already spent £50 on a used one that doesn’t seem to work and the next cheapest one available (used) was £65.

Id heard that brand new ones need to be flashed with the correct software for the car. I have a code reader called a GAP IID tool which was developed specifically for the L322 so I fired them an email to see if they could provide a file for the tool to flash. The guy there has confirmed they do not need flashing, they come pre-programmed, it may just need taking out of transport mode (shuts down most items when they car is under delivery from the factory) which the tool can do.

Just have to see what happens when it gets here!

I dunno why I’m so hung up on the bloody cost. Should you read back a few pages, you would find that about 6/7 years ago, when I had my 147 GTA, I splurged £1500 on what must have been the last available ‘new old stock’ engine ECU as they were NLA and a common and known failure point with no guaranteed fix when my one hadn’t actually failed. I must be turning into a right tight bastard.

[Split_Pin]

Gap IID is the daddy of them all, you're lucky to have that!

Good luck on the new BCM.

[J-T]

14 hours ago, Split_Pin said:

Gap IID is the daddy of them all, you're lucky to have that!

Good luck on the new BCM.

If you lurk about the full fat Range Rover forum for sale section they appear fairly regularly. I found someone had posted a wanted ad for one that someone had responded to offering to sell his, but the OP never replied so I messaged him and asked to buy it instead. I think it was £250 (vs about £450 new) plus £30 to transfer ownership which is a bit of a swizz but the guy who runs it does seem mega helpful to be fair.

[J-T]

Been on at this, ferreting about under the seat again.

I noticed something on the main connector when I was taking the old BCM out 

Hmmm. Looks like someone’s been probing here. Makes me a bit less confident that it’s gonna be the BCM at fault, but the ‘new’ one’s here now, so in it went. Everything seemed fine when I turned the car on apart from the fact it wouldn’t seem to operate the suspension. I’d left it parked in access mode and asking it to raise resulted in the light flashing but nowt happening. I took it round the block and it moved out of access mode itself as it should, but then wouldn’t adjust on the dial when it was stopped. I scanned it but I wasn’t getting any fault codes. I had a bit of a mooch about in the tool and there was option to tell the car it had a new BCM, so I pressed that and the suspension would adjust as normal after that. I won’t really know if it’s solved the steering issues and other random glitches until I’ve put some miles on it as it’s intermittent. 

I’ve also been on trying to sort a headlight fault. The diver’s side headlight flickers a little and sometimes turns itself off and won’t come back on. They’re Xenons and apparently these kind of issues are fairly common with these prefacelift lights. It looked like it was a fault with the ballast which is on the back of the light unit, so you need to take the headlight out to access it. Since I had to take the light out, I figured I may as well just buy a compete unit as the plastic lug that the sidelight screws to has snapped on mine. They’re a bit hard to find with all the lugs intact but find one I did, so I ordered it up. Here’s how it arrived:

Fuckin great. Rather than send it back I’ve decided to make a good one out of the two. The lenses clip on with metal clips so I’ll swap my good lens on to the ‘new light’. Best plug it in first to check it works 

You’ll have to take my word that it did! As per usual though, nothing’s that simple. It’s come with the gubbins for the headlight washers attached; this is another bracket that usually stays on the car. Unfortunately Land Rover decided to use 2 8mm bolts to attach the headlight to this bracket. On my 65k mile car these were fine but would you like a guess as to what they were like on the replacement? I didn’t want to get into removing  the washer bracket from the car as access is terrible, so some Dremelling occurred 

That got them apart. The bloody wiper arm was welded on as well. It was 8pm by this point and I’d had enough so I’m going to have a go at swapping the lenses tomorrow. 

[J-T]

Got the lenses swapped over 

As you can see, there’s a gasket on the back of the lens and the lens is held on by a series of metal clips around the edge. All pretty straightforward. Gave it all a good clean whilst it was off.

When putting it back on I realised why the lug had snapped on mine.

The white (well, sort of yellow) plastic screw on fixing you can see to the left of the electrical plug holds the sidelight to the headlight by screwing on to a threaded bar that fits between the plastic lug. As you can see access is fairly terrible. The replacement headlight came with the sidelight attached still and this plastic fixing was welded to the threaded bar with rust. So it’s likely that on my car, someone replaced the sidelight in the past and couldn’t get that off so snapped it off. Anyway, all back together now 

The only other mild complication was one of the grille fixings pinging off into oblivion when trying to put it back on; there are only 3 and 1 was missing anyway. So I binned them all and found some Chinese replacements 

Job jobbed.

[J-T]

This bloody car!!

Ive been out in it doing some errands, helping a relative clear a property. All fine and driving lovely. Came home and swung out to put it in the garage and PING the dash lights up HDC/ABS failure again.

I scanned it and it was saying the front right wheel speed sensor was no signal again. If you’ve read my previous updates, I only changed this for a new Bosch sensor a couple of weeks ago and when I came to do it, found that the original sensor was not very old as it came out too easily.

I had a look at live data and the tool just said NA for all wheel sensors which is what it was doing last time until it suddenly wasn’t and then the front right sensor was dead and the others provided a reading. I came out of live data and cleared the codes, which came back as soon as I moved the steering wheel.

Read the fault codes again and now it could not find the ABS ECU at all; again it did this in a roundabout way last time. That occasion I was using the iCarsoft reader which could not connect to the ECU, but the IID did, now the IID can’t.

Long and short it looks like the ABS ECU is failing as well. I think I’ve a wiring diagram on my laptop so I’ll try and do some basic checks first, but I remember reading on the FFRR forum that these two ECUs (ABS and BCM) take loads of data from each other and failure of one can look like failure of the other. I’m fairly certain that the BCM was failing because replacing that solved other weird faults I was getting. The fact I’ve found evidence of recently replaced sensors and probing marks on the loom makes me think these two modules was leading someone up the garden path, hence it ended up in auction. 

Bloody canbus systems, one thing gets upset and upsets everything else in the process.

[J-T]

Done a bit more on this ABS issue this week.

I checked the earth which was fine. I intended to check continuity on the wire from the wheel speed sensor to the loom connector pin but I couldn’t find the long leads for my multimeter and it wouldn’t stretch. So then I thought I’d try swapping the front wheel speed sensors to see if the fault moved. Except the other side wasn’t going come out without maybe damaging it - I spent about half an hour wiggling it with mole grips and got it moving so it probably would come eventually but I gave up because I’m pretty sure it is the ECU at fault. 

Luckily it’s easy to get to. The black bit with the big connector is the ECU, with the silver metal pump on the back. Luckily these do split apart.

After doing some reading, it was reckoned these need coding to the car (which I can’t do) unless you get one same part number from the same engine variant. Well there was one on eBay so I made a low ball offer of £60 (I think it was £90 odd) which got accepted. 

Fitted that and the car went fucking haywire, bings bongs loads of random codes, low range light flashing, all kinds. So I don’t think it was actually from a V8 even though it said it was. Or internet lore was actually bollocks and they all need coding to the car. 

This being a (relatively) early car, it uses a Bosch 5.7 ECU which quite a few BMWs used around the same time. If you google them, they are fairly well renowned for failing and presenting the symptoms mine is. So I googled repair services and found a company that will attempt a test and repair. So that’s currently where I’m at! Hopefully they can fix it.
 

[Dave_Q]

The ABS module looks like VAG stuff of a similar age which definitely does need coding to the car, they are coded with a string of numbers which contain a partial VIN and coding for relevant options.

Maybe that's the case here.

There are outfits that repair them, I think actual shitting themselves is fairly rare and it's more likely there are is a duff solder joint or 2 somewhere inside.

[J-T]

Just had a phone call, they’ve tested the unit and…no fault found 🙄

So, either the two week old abs sensor has failed (I find this unlikely as I searched for a Bosch sensor to make sure it was a decent brand and the sensor it replaced obviously wasn’t very old either), or there is something deeper going on, which I’ve probably got somewhere between no hope and Bob Hope of finding.

The sensor failing would make sense if communication to the unit didn’t keep failing when trying to read codes, live data etc. 

Oh well, I’ll have to keep trying as I can’t see a garage doing any better. 

Once I’ve got the ECU unit back I’ll have to try and start testing some wiring. 

[J-T]

ABS ECU is back fitted.

I decided to try plugging in another wheel speed sensor but just went for the cheapest I could find which was £12 on Amazon. Well what do you know…fault cleared, no codes, no lights, car happy. And it fits better than the £50 Bosch one. 

Before fitting it, I had a gander at the reluctor ring in case that was corroded and causing issues but that looks new as well.

When I unplugged the old sensor from the loom connector, I noticed something fall. When I had a closer look, it was the little lock tab on the female connector 

This made me think maybe it wasn’t staying connected properly, so I plugged the old sensor back in and held it together, but it was still showing as open circuit. 

I’ve put a cable tie round the new one

So it looks like it was just another bad sensor, but I’m not 100% convinced. It’s eaten through 3 in less than 1000 miles. Unfortunately Land Rover don’t stock them any more or I’d try a genuine one.

Lets see how long this one lasts!