FL1 2001 TD4 - is there a kill switch?

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A few times recently my 2001 FL1 TD4 wouldn't start due to a weak/dead battery. After a few unsuccessful attempts to fire her up, everything - and I mean everything - went dead as if the battery had been disconnected, and I had to remove the terminals, leave it a couple of minutes, reconnect everything and try again. I'm wondering if there's some kind of immobiliser or safety cut-out which kicks in in these circumstances and if so, if there's a way to get around it.
The starting issue has since been solved (it was a crap battery).
 
Closest I've seen to this is our freelander TD4, an early 2002 one, went deadship as you described, upon investigation I found that the contacts inside the main fusebox were all heavily covered in ver-de-gris. Follow the wires from the live terminal, one thick wire goes to the starter, one thinner wire (for the PTC heater) and another thick wire that comes from the live terminal and goes to the forward most of the two fuseboxes in the engine bay. The other fusebox actualy houses the ECU's. IIRC it goes as a crimped on eyelet onto the cable, that then goes to a strip metal link, that provides the supply side for some heavy fuses and fusable links, so disconnect the battery, , remove the fusble links etc and clean those contacts, thenreassembel the fusebox and put the live back on, car should be a god'un now.
 
If you have a swatch at this thread from late last year, I even got as far as making a picture showing another forum user the most likely spot for an absolutely electrically dead freelander:
https://www.landyzone.co.uk/land-rover/freelander-no-electric-problem.352898/#post-4708894

Morning Laura - I had something similar a couple of months ago, car completely dead, no lights on the dashboard or anything, let alone cranking/turning over. And that was despite having a fully charged battery... In my case when I investigated it I was able to sort it by cleaning a couple of contacts in the fusebox. Start at the battery, on the live terminal there are a couple of leads coming off it, one goes to the starter motor, ignore that one, t'other goes to the engine bay fuse box on the passenger side of the engine bay, this is the one you need to work on.

VERY IMPORTANT SAFETY NOTICE - DISCONNECT THE BATTERY AT THIS POINT!

The fuse box you need is at the back passenger side corner of the engine bay, remove the cover and you'll see the end of this wire from the battery coming in to an eyelet connection and bolting onto some metal strips, remove the nut clean the eyelet and the part of the fusebox it connects to with DRY scotch-brite / steel wool / fine sandpaper before refitting them. Now follow that bar along and there are "fusable links" essentially thin metal strips, remove them and clean them the same way. Put the link back on, put the cover back on the fusebox, reconnect the battery, pray this does fix it as the tailgate window is going to go down when you reconnect the power and you'll need the power to be back on to wind it back up, and hopefully your freelander should start now.

I've grabbed this picture from an ebay listing and annotated it with a thick red dashed line around the area I'm suggesting you clean up the contacts on. The missing bolt on that bar is the one that holds the main feed from the battery.

View attachment 194008

If that works I'd take an extra ten minutes, disconnect the battery again, and clean all the contacts on the adjacent links, which are to the left of the red dashed lined box in the above picture.
 
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