AA knackered my car and now deny liability

Hi all

I own a 2002 P38, one of the last - 4.6 V8 with LPG conversion, owned for five years.

I have done a lot of miles in that time but the car has always been well maintained and looked after. Now that my mileage has gone right down my plan was to get paint work tidied up, maybe retrim the interior and get at least another five years out of it.

However this has not happened, I have been doing a few weeks work in Ireland and had taken my car with me.

On Friday the 19th of April I had difficulty starting the car, the starter motor turned but not fast enough to start the engine.

I called AA Breakdown on the UK number to report the problem as was advised that the AA in Ireland could deal with it and they would contact their Irish colleagues to arrange assistance for me.

The patrol man got me started but advised the battery needed replacement and offered me a supply and fit service by the AA.

This was carried on Saturday morning, the 20th, but the AA mechanic managed to short the battery terminals with his spanner while the new battery was still connected to the cars electrics. I am no expert on cars and as he did not seem concerned did not think it was an issue at the time.

However by Monday the 22nd the in dash sat nav was just showing a bright white screen and it could not be switched off. Subsequently by Thursday I was noticing a slight smell of burning and a sizzling noise from behind the dash when I started the car. I called the garage in North Wales that services my car and they suggested that it needed attention. As I could not find any garage locally in Ireland that could do the work I travelled back to North Wales on the Friday afternoon, and on the drive from Holyhead more things started to go wrong, ABS, traction control and airbag warning lights came on at intervals and the radio became faulty, sound only seemed to be coming from one loudspeaker and the volume was very low and could not be adjusted. Additionally the air suspension started to act oddly.

When I got it to the garage they diagnosed that the body control ECU under the drivers seat had been damaged by the short circuit and it would be an expensive repair.

After days of fruitless attempts to contact anyone at the AA who had any interest in my predicament I was told to make a statement, which I did and also the garage were to provide an estimate of the cost of repair.

I was promised it would be dealt with in five working days but today I have been contacted by the claims department to say they would not honour my claim - their email is at the bottom of the posting. It would appear that their employee in Ireland has not mentioned the short circuit incident. I saw it happen and I am very angry that the AA should believe that a AA member of many years should lie to them.

I want to take legal action over this, the claims manager at my brokers said their solicitors should be able to help but before I do this has anyone any experience of the consequences of short circuiting a battery in a P38 while its still attached to the car ?

TIA - Nigel




Email from AA claims department

I write further to my previous correspondence in respect of the above. I can confirm my investigations are now complete and these have involved obtaining a report from AA Ireland, who appointed their patrol to attend to the breakdown of your vehicle. In addition, I have referred your case file to our in house technical department.

The patrol confirms he was tasked to your vehicle for a reported flat battery. When arriving at the scene he connected his memory saver unit to your vehicles onboard diagnostic socket to prevent any loss of radio codes and personal settings during the battery replacement.

Before removing your vehicles battery he ensured the ignition was off and the key was removed from the ignition barrel. With this completed he disconnected the old battery and replaced it with a new “Varta” battery. Once the battery had been installed he checked the charging system using his multi meter and specialised ammeter. The system was charging correctly and there were no dashboard warning light illuminated. He reports that the engine did start and run before he left the scene.

You confirm in your previous correspondence that the vehicle worked correctly for two days, after which the satellite navigation screen showed a bright white and could not be turned off. It is the opinion of our in house technical department, that any damage caused by our engineer would have been instant. Our technical department confirm; if the battery had been shorted during the engineer’s attendance, the battery would be damaged and the electrical system would be isolated.

In view of the above, I am unable to accept our patrol has been negligent or that his actions have increased the repair costs. Unfortunately therefore, I have no offers to make in respect of your claim.

Sorry mate I'm with the AA on this, I'd of thought any damage would of instant like they say. I've never seen a delayed fault on other equipment.

driving that many miles could of done more damage. should of had it fixed where it screwed up not wait days, as doing so probably did collateral damage

Duncp73 said:

Sorry mate I'm with the AA on this, I'd of thought any damage would of instant like they say. I've never seen a delayed fault on other equipment.

Click to expand...

Sorry, should have mentioned that the garage I took it to, an independent LR specialist, has seen exactly the same problem before and he told me that due to the nature of the electrics faults in the ECU are not always immediately apparent.

Beside that many faults within six days of their employee shorting out my battery is more than a coincidence, in my opinion anyway.

There are numerous errors in their version of events that make me believe the engineer did not mention the fault, no doubt to save his @r $ e but I dont want to elaborate until I have spoken to a solicitor

.and who are you?

Thor1950 said:

driving that many miles could of done more damage. should of had it fixed where it screwed up not wait days, as doing so probably did collateral damage

Click to expand...

As I said I am not a mechanic or a car expert so I could not be expected to know that, even if it was the case. Really the guy should have owned up on the spot.

crashbox said:

.and who are you?

Click to expand...

Not sure what you mean by this ?

I have owned four classic rangys, two p38's and a 3.9 ES disco so a genuine lover of LR products

nige999 said:

Sorry, should have mentioned that the garage I took it to, an independent LR specialist, has seen exactly the same problem before and he told me that due to the nature of the electrics faults in the ECU are not always immediately apparent.

Beside that many faults within six days of their employee shorting out my battery is more than a coincidence, in my opinion anyway.

There are numerous errors in their version of events that make me believe the engineer did not mention the fault, no doubt to save his @r $ e but I dont want to elaborate until I have spoken to a solicitor

Click to expand...

OK mate, I hope you get it sorted without cost to yourself. Just make sure you get a written engineers report. I don't know if it would be worth getting 1 from LandRover.

nige999 said:

As I said I am not a mechanic or a car expert so I could not be expected to know that, even if it was the case. Really the guy should have owned up on the spot.

Click to expand...

would have thought it would have shown up straight away ,a quick short of positive lead isnt necessarily a serious thing ,the current flowing through spanner not system

Duncp73 said:

OK mate, I hope you get it sorted without cost to yourself. Just make sure you get a written engineers report. I don't know if it would be worth getting 1 from LandRover.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the support, I will do my best - it was a lovely car before this happened.

nige999 said:

Not sure what you mean by this ?

I have owned four classic rangys, two p38's and a 3.9 ES disco so a genuine lover of LR products

Click to expand...

Normal protocol on Landyzone is to give a brief introduction of where you are, vehicles owned etc then this stops the inevitable ridicule from the elements on the fringes of the site. Hope you get somewhere with this problem, keep us informed.

jamesmartin said:

would have thought it would have shown up straight away ,a quick short of positive lead isnt necessarily a serious thing ,the current flowing through spanner not system

Click to expand...

Maybe the case with older car electrical systems but there is a lot of electronics in these ECUs, it wouldn't have been current that caused the problem - more likely voltage fluctuation. Thats why computers need very stable power supplies.

crashbox said:

Normal protocol on Landyzone is to give a brief introduction of where you are, vehicles owned etc then this stops the inevitable ridicule from the elements on the fringes of the site. Hope you get somewhere with this problem, keep us informed.

Click to expand...

Sorry but the email from the AA has got me stressed out.

A short intro though:

Live In France and Wales, mature owner of a 2002 Range Rover P38 in Alveston red, work in the IT industry and have previously owned four or more classics, this is the second P38 and also owned a 3.9 Disco, last of the series 1.

Not a mechanic and don't have time, inclination or facilities to tinker with cars.

My car has been well looked after in the five years I have owned it and I have always spent the money if needed.

Prior to getting into the IT industry I worked as a specialist on the electronics of guided missiles so know full well about the serious effect even a bit of static electricity can have on fragile binary and analogue electronics. But that does not mean I know anything about Land Rover electronics so leave that to the experts.

Good luck, hope you get it sorted and welcome to landyzone

My 2p. Shorting the battery across its terminals may cause a sudden voltage drop to your ecu and associated electrics - causing sync problems, alarm problems, resets and a locked up sat nav - possibly. But it wouldn't cause any physical damage as the current will take the shortest path - ie from -ve to +ve across the spanner and will not go anywhere near your car's electrics.

A different story if he reversed polarity or course, but assuming it was just a short across the terminals, no harm should have been done.

IMHO

Nik

:welcome2:

He killed your sat nav by not leaving it 2 minutes to shut down correctly before disconnecting the battery. At the very least you should be able to get something out of them for that as the procedure is explained in the owners manual.

speedyyellow said:

He killed your sat nav by not leaving it 2 minutes to shut down correctly before disconnecting the battery. At the very least you should be able to get something out of them for that as the procedure is explained in the owners manual.

Click to expand...

Disagree a little bit with you. IF he had connected his memory saver, the ignition would have been off sufficient time for the nav unit to go to sleep.

The burning smell you had was probably the fuse box in the engine bay going bye bye.

If the nav unit is disconnected, the radio should start working again. Fried nav unit in boot=no radio. Mines the same.

What rating battery did he fit? Is it possible that he fitted the wrong type?

My initial reaction was short on battery wont affect it but....shorting out the battery will also short out his memory saver (which is I presume another smaller battery) so any current from this will flow through the wiring between the mem saver and the offending spanner. Just depends where the mem saver is connected what it might do - just a thought

NikTheGeek said:

My 2p. Shorting the battery across its terminals may cause a sudden voltage drop to your ecu and associated electrics - causing sync problems, alarm problems, resets and a locked up sat nav - possibly. But it wouldn't cause any physical damage as the current will take the shortest path - ie from -ve to +ve across the spanner and will not go anywhere near your car's electrics.

A different story if he reversed polarity or course, but assuming it was just a short across the terminals, no harm should have been done.

IMHO

Nik

Click to expand...

Current isn't the issue here, of course it will go through the spanner but voltage will drop to nearly zero, neatly explained on the website of the University of Illinois Physics department:

In a short-circuit, the voltage across the short doesn't really drop to zero. It does drop well below the value it's intended to have. The current goes up a lot, but not to infinity. There's typically some resistance on the way to the short circuit that limits the current no matter how low the resistance in the short gets.

The considerable voltage drop will happen very quickly and once the short circuit is broken then it will go back up very quickly.

This is a very large fluctuation in voltage, and when you consider the voltage fluctuation tolerances of most electronic components is usually less than plus/minus 10% then it is to be expected that electronic components are likely to be damaged by a drop from 12 volts to 2 volts or less followed by a rapid rise to 12 volts or more.

Electronics can be protected from current fluctuations by fuses etc. but unless the ECU had some sort of protection against such an extreme voltage fluctuation then some damage could occur, possibly not immediately catastrophic but likely to cause random faults like have happened in my car. With immediate catastrophic failure the radio would be completely dead and the sat nav would be completely off, not just "wonky".

Car electrics are a weird enough science without adding fragile electronics into the mix, especially in a hostile environment like a car. The "body control ECU" in the P38 must be mounted under the seat for a reason, that reason most likely is that it would be too delicate to live in a dirty noisy and rattly engine bay.

Years ago I had a ratty old Rover SD1 Vanden Plas EFI in which the ECU was mounted on a metal plate in the passenger front foot well. For some reason the metal plate was not present in the car so the ECU just sat loose under the carpet. On a long drive one dark night the car was running like a bear, but just us home eventually.

Found out why the next day, the big plug that fitted into the ECU had come loose and most of the pins were only making very tenuous contact. Even like that the car still drove when really it should just have given up and died. But it was still able to run, albeit very sick.

Same thing with my range Rover, there was no big burst of high current to completely fry the ECU, just the voltage drop to make it sick, and this sickness eventually manifested itself in the electrical/electronic items it was meant to control. Bit like in a human where brain damage can cause some parts to go slightly wrong but other parts might still work fine, example a stroke.

After all an ECU like the "body control ECU" in the P38 is like a brain, controlling functions of a "body".