Cooling fans constantly running

Fuse 4 feeds Nominal Battery Voltage (NBV) to the relay coil on the Brown/ Pink, from the Main Relay. The Engine Control Module (ECM) applies the ground when the fan needed on the Blue/ Red.
The Fan relay switching the fan on by joining the Slate/ Blue and Brown/Red together.
The Slate/Blue gets NBV via Link 5.
The fuse 4 receives NBV from the Main Relay. The Main Relay is itself triggered by the pin 54 of ECM on the White/Pink wire.

Replaced all the relays, inside engine bay and just for the kick, replaced all in drivers side cabin.
I'm not aware of any more (apart from in the td4)

What happens if you unplug the ECM? Do the fans run then?

Nodge68 said:

What happens if you unplug the ECM? Do the fans run then?

Click to expand...

When I unplug the smaller of the two, the fans keep running.
When I unplug the larger one, the fans stop.

I expect that confuses things a little further as pin 54, is situated on the smaller connector. (Fans keep running when this is removed)

ALR2 said:

I expect that confuses things a little further as pin 54, is situated on the smaller connector. (Fans keep running when this is removed)

Click to expand...

That discounts the ECM switching the main relay when it shouldn't.
With pin 54 open, the fan should stop. That is the ECM feed to the Main Relay.
So the fan relay could be stuck closed.
What happens if you disconnect the Blue/Red on pin 67?

No idea.
C0913 pin 67 = UR (The small connector)

But i'll give it a try tomorrow.
(I have an ultra busy day, so i'll see how far i get in doing it)

67 is blue and white.
But how do I remove the pin ?

Forget everything.....
Found the problem.

That'll cause all sorts of problems.
Fingers crossed, everything works correctly after it's sorted.

I haven't had time to see if any wires have fused together yet, as I need to go to a hospital appointment.
Judging by the forecast, looks like it could be a job for next week.

Someone had jammed and squashed the main power cable between the heat shield and alternator.
(The image posted is where I have moved it to its correct position)

ALR2 said:

I haven't had time to see if any wires have fused together yet, as I need to go to a hospital appointment.
Judging by the forecast, looks like it could be a job for next week.

Someone had jammed and squashed the main power cable between the heat shield and alternator.
(The image posted is where I have moved it to its correct position)

Click to expand...

Some people have no clue about what they are doing. They definitely shouldn't be anywhere near a car.

I expect the main charge cable is backfeeding some power into the ECM or it's relay. The burned plastic will act like a resistor, passing some current.
This would account for the 5 Volts you were seeing.
Lucky there wasn't a fire. I suspect it wasn't far from a disaster.

It's a melted mess.
I'll rewire the 3 cables as far back as possible.
Re insulate the main cable.

I have cable conduit, so it's all back to normal.
Hopefully, this is will sort it all out.

It's the only issue I have managed find.
I'll update this thread once it's all done.
Fingers crossed.

Guess where these wires go back to?
Yup, fuse 4.

All 3 wires have melted and fused to the 12v main power.
So it looks like 12v was going back to the ecm.

Either way, I've taken the engine bash plate off (for access) , gone as far back as i can tracing the 3 cables (there is 4 but i think the fourth (red) has managed to escape fusing it self)
Fingers and hands are cut to shreds and sore (after over a week of investigation) , so i'll leave everything now until Monday.

(trying to not make this look like a blog, but more a documentation for future users- hope it helps)

Just to clarify:
I've circled (at the top) the 3 wires that have fused to the 12v (feeding 12v back to the ecm)

I've circled (at the bottom) the red wire which has escaped (thankfully) fusing it self to main 12v, as it spurred off below the engine shield.

Well done finding the fault and good luck fixing it.
I was about to suggest possibly a faulty engine bay temp sensor. Not sure if the Freelander 1.8 has one but my MGF did and caused a similar fault (fans running for a long time after engine turned off) when it failed.

Temp sensor was the first thing I changed.
It was the voltage coming out of the ecm I couldn't fathom out.
I have 3 freelanders to compare with and they all had 0v.

The only reason I found the cause was because when I was head first looking at the rear of the engine bay, I could hear an arching sound...
Not knowing what was causing it, I came out.
Shook the car (to emulate my body weight whilst in head first) and to my astonishment saw my exhaust shield (which had some minor rust corrosion at a bolt holder so was slightly loose, but no real concern just yet) was arching and sparking against the top of the exhaust itself.
Presto...

Yeah, that "leave it until Monday" never happened.
I cut the top connector as far down as I could, giving me around 3 inches of good cable.
Found an old loom, sourced the correct coloured wires (managed to find around 3 foot of each)
Soldiered and heat shrunk each new cable.
Measured an old loom conduit, cut that to the correct length.
Assembled everything and heat shrunk the entire new loom.
Fed it all back (using a new route well away from the exhaust and 12v main cable)

From under the car:

Cut away the 3 wires as far up as I could, giving me around another 3 inches of decent wiring.

All 3 wires where then temporarily connected, 12v connected. Fan connector connected, power restored to the battery,...
.... and the problem has now been completely resolved.

I'll permanently solder all the 3 wires up tomorrow or Monday.

I will now consider this "case closed"

ALR2 said:

Yeah, that "leave it until Monday" never happened.
I cut the top connector as far down as I could, giving me around 3 inches of good cable.
Found an old loom, sourced the correct coloured wires (managed to find around 3 foot of each)
Soldiered and heat shrunk each new cable.
Measured an old loom conduit, cut that to the correct length.
Assembled everything and heat shrunk the entire new loom.
Fed it all back (using a new route well away from the exhaust and 12v main cable)

From under the car:

Cut away the 3 wires as far up as I could, giving me around another 3 inches of decent wiring.

All 3 wires where then temporarily connected, 12v connected. Fan connector connected, power restored to the battery,...
.... and the problem has now been completely resolved.

I'll permanently solder all the 3 wires up tomorrow or Monday.

I will now consider this "case closed"

Click to expand...

Brilliant, Well done.
The temp sensor I was talking about is not for water or oil temp but the engine bay temp.
Probably not so important in a Freelander as a MGF, the engine bay in them is pretty tight.

ALR2 said:

Yeah, that "leave it until Monday" never happened.
I cut the top connector as far down as I could, giving me around 3 inches of good cable.
Found an old loom, sourced the correct coloured wires (managed to find around 3 foot of each)
Soldiered and heat shrunk each new cable.
Measured an old loom conduit, cut that to the correct length.
Assembled everything and heat shrunk the entire new loom.
Fed it all back (using a new route well away from the exhaust and 12v main cable)

From under the car:

Cut away the 3 wires as far up as I could, giving me around another 3 inches of decent wiring.

All 3 wires where then temporarily connected, 12v connected. Fan connector connected, power restored to the battery,...
.... and the problem has now been completely resolved.

I'll permanently solder all the 3 wires up tomorrow or Monday.

I will now consider this "case closed"

Click to expand...

Excellent news. That was a brain teaser for a while. I had a strong suspicion that it was a wiring fault. However I would never have guessed that the harness was burned.

Alibro said:

Brilliant, Well done.
The temp sensor I was talking about is not for water or oil temp but the engine bay temp.
Probably not so important in a Freelander as a MGF, the engine bay in them is pretty tight.

Click to expand...

There's no engine bay temp sensor in the Freelander Ali. Only the mid engine MGF get that sensor, for it's bay cooling fan.