Freelander 1 HDC light not coming on.

hi there,

testing out the HDC on my FL1 , the light on the dash comes on when the ignition is turned on, and then goes off, all good with that. but when i press the switch i get no lights on the dash, should i?
i've removed the gear lever gaiter and all wires look intact and plugged into the bottom of the switch okay, switch seems to engage and disengage freely but nothing else happens. the red backlight on the switch comes on when the lights are on but doesn't change if i switch it back and forth.
Hopefully the answer will just be a new S/H switch of fleabay but any help or guidance is very much appreciated.
cheers in advance

Steve

You can test the switch by linking it with a loop of wire.
If the HDC light then starts flashing, you've proved the switch contacts are fubar.

Nodge68 said:

You can test the switch by linking it with a loop of wire.
If the HDC light then starts flashing, you've proved the switch contacts are fubar.

Click to expand...

looking at the switch there appears to be a few wires going into it, any idea which contacts to short out?
cheers

Steve

drfoster said:

looking at the switch there appears to be a few wires going into it, any idea which contacts to short out?
cheers

Steve

Click to expand...

From memory no. It's been a long time since I've needed to look at an HDC switch. I'm guessing this is the console mounted switch, as opposed to the early gear lever mounted switch?

I'm thinking there are probably 4 wires, 2 are for the night time back light, the other 2 will be for the switch contacts.

Nodge68 said:

From memory no. It's been a long time since I've needed to look at an HDC switch. I'm guessing this is the console mounted switch, as opposed to the early gear lever mounted switch?

I'm thinking there are probably 4 wires, 2 are for the night time back light, the other 2 will be for the switch contacts.

Click to expand...

hi, its the gearlever mounted switch, i'll get the multimeter out at the weekend and test the cable, should be easy to spot the right wires by turning the lights on, cheers dude

in a strange turn of events the HDC started flashing today when i was driving, putting it into first it went solid, and seemed to work as i could crawl around with no feet on the pedals. but its very intermittent, i left it on the last time i went out this evening and nothing but then randomly started flashing when i was driving, turned it off and on again and nothing, so looks like a dodgy switch so next thing to buy of fleabay. good news is that when it works it seems to work properly. proper intermittent these blooming landrovers are lol

new HDC switch ordered of fleabay from a breakers, hopefully this one will be less intermittent

Well the replacement HDC switch did the job, swapped in two seconds and now the HDC lights come on and off reliably, tested it on a local ramp and seems to do the biz too. happy days!