Hi All, My Sons 2002 TD5 doing are head in!!

We are new to this site and hopefully someone may help. My son had a cutting out on his Landy and nothing would come on. After a while everything would come back but the battery would be flat. We change the battery, alternator and had the Starter reconditioned. Now it would only turn over once or twice and no more. We tried jump leads on it and it started to smoke under the centre consul. So advice on what could be are next point of action please. Thank you

Welcome to the forum.
I know you have a TD5 but Discovery 2 V8 owners know that there is a earth strap at the rear of the engine connecting to the firewall. This strap is for grounding engine circuits. Sometimes if this earth strap is corroded and doesn’t make proper contact for a ground, the hand brake linkage at the center console becomes the ground. It’ll get extremely hot and will start smoking.
You might want to check the rear of the Td5 engine if it has that earth strap.

Hi and thank you for your quick reply, will check this out at the weekend as Son as stated to take centre consol out. Many thanks

Hello and welcome
A quick way to check is use a jump lead from the battery to the engine as a temp earth lead, if it starts fine thats your problem

Welcome to the forum

JUKE179r said:

Welcome to the forum.
I know you have a TD5 but Discovery 2 V8 owners know that there is a earth strap at the rear of the engine connecting to the firewall. This strap is for grounding engine circuits. Sometimes if this earth strap is corroded and doesn’t make proper contact for a ground, the hand brake linkage at the center console becomes the ground. It’ll get extremely hot and will start smoking.
You might want to check the rear of the Td5 engine if it has that earth strap.

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Hi I don’t suppose you can give me some info on where about I should be looking between Engine and Firewall. Would it be best from underneath/top driver or passenger side? Any help would help to save me looking for something that I may not be able to see without taking something off. Best regards

On a V8 it’s on the LHD side of the engine a the rear. It’s like a 25cm length mesh earth strap.


Again, I don’t know if the Td5 engine has this same earth strap that connects to the firewall. Hopefully a Td5 guru can chime in for more clarification.

JUKE179r said:

On a V8 it’s on the LHD side of the engine a the rear. It’s like a 25cm length mesh earth strap.

Again, I don’t know if the Td5 engine has this same earth strap that connects to the firewall. Hopefully a Td5 guru can chime in for more clarification.

Click to expand...

Thank you very much for a quick response and will check out