series 3 smoking dash....

Hi everyone i in need of a little advice again.
Took my series 3 out today after driving for ten minutes got a load of smoke coming out the dashboard. Turned off phoned long suffering wife to tow me home (not the first time lol) Pulled dash away and can see melted wires,one brown one earth (both melted) going into a silver cylinder thing? do i need to replace the silver thing as well as repair wires? it seemed to have 4 connectors but only two wires connected is that right? Many thanks in advance for any help,Cheers Matt

have you a pic ,brown wires are battery lives black earths ,flasher units can be cylinder shaped but have 2 or 3 terminals and no brown or black wires, could be a relay but would need 4 wires to operate

Hi thanks for the reply! Had another look it def got 4 connections on bottom of it . One green wire with brown stripe,melted on one connection,one brown wire on other connection which also has a green and black wire on same spade. it is a bosch component guess an inch wide 2 inches long. It is screwed to the dash by an l shaped bracket from the top of it

will try and post pic not sure how to do it though

My car may have caught fire but i learnt how to upload a picture lol

It sounds like a relay or the flasher unit fitted for the towing electrics. Have you got a multimeter to check out the circuits ? You don't want to be setting it on fire again unless you are really ****ed off with it..........

Thanks for all the replies. Thanks joe27979 for identifying what it is! if it is faulty would that be why wires melted ? Take it replacing,renewing wires and then i good to go again?

Check your tow hitch socket wiring and indicators for sign of fault could also be colummn indicator switch.

Difficulty here is going to be getting the smoke back into the wires. I think Lucas sold a special tool for this.

...if you can still get the smoke. It's all metric these days.

I think theres a guy on ebay selling genuine NOS Lucas smoke in canisters

well that was a jolly read to start the day

bet the guy had fun writing it

LOL that is great the link is particularly handy for the replacement smoke..... Thanks everyone hope you all having a great xmas sure our landies will give us more fun in the coming year !

Do you have a copy of the wiring diagram and back of dash connections?

Hi oxides no as yet i haven't been able to spend to much time on it family and xmas getting in the way ....

pdf Land Rover Manuals | Landroverweb.com

Merry Xmas!

Perfect thanks for that oxides,Merry xmas and a happy new year !