My First Land Rover - Its got some issues!

Dave_landy said:

Apologies in advance if these questions have already been answered. I have searched the forums for answers, but the issues are pretty hard to explain, let along trying to pick a couple of words to search on....

So first of all, a bit of background.
First of all, this is my first land rover and I am no mechanic. I am however, happy to have a go at anything, and feel I do have an ounce of common sense and while working in IT is not even remotely close to working on vehicles, I am fairly well rehearsed at stripping down components and putting things back together in a working state.

The Car;
The Log book shows the model as a Land Rover Freelander Xedi S-wagon. Its a 2 litre diesel and has done around 93k.
It has an almost full service history, was MOT'd and has a bunch of receipts and documents detailing all the work that has been carried out on it in recent history. (These are at home and I guess could prove useful in identifying the issue so I will post details of these later).

Essentially I have 3 issues, all of which I believe are completely independent.

The first and most pressing issue is that many of the electrics in the rear of the vehicle are not working as summarised below;

Working
Sidelights
Indicators

Not Working
Brake Lights (all three)
Reverse Lights
Rear Windsreen, including the heater and wiper / washer

The reason I am putting this at the top of my priority list if due to the brake lights, which I understand is a road offence not to have them working... On top of which its incredibly annoying not to have the rear window drop in / out of the seal when opening / close the rear door.
I have done some extremely basic troubleshooting of this, specifically around the brake lights. Using a voltage meter I can see there is a circuit between the positive and negative wires feeding the light, but I cannot pick-up any voltage change what so ever when trying to engage the brake lights, almost as if the circuit is fine, but whatever is telling the brake lights to turn on, just isn't doing it. Its exactly the same for the reverse lights too.
The cabling to the rear windscreen motor is a bit more complicated, so I am not 100% sure what I can test hear. However, I can hear a distinctive click from the motor when trying to raise or lower the rear window, which is accompanied by a single beep from the front console. This beep and click only occurs when trying to lower the window (presumably because its already raised to full height?).

My only thoughts are a bad earth or something similar which all the rear electrics share. If that's the case, I guess as the rear window would have a higher power draw than the lights and could possibly arc causing a brief blip of power, hence the audible click? This unfortunately doesn't stack up with the fact the voltage meter picks up there is a full circuit in place?
Also forgot to mention the obvious, I have checked all the fuses and bulbs for the affected lights and window.



So that's problem number 1 out of the way.
The next problem might not actually be an issue - but seeing as I have a guy I work with who has had land rovers for many years state he has never experienced this, its worth mentioning.

When reversing, the is a strong feeling of 'braking' occurring while the vehicle is in gear. This is far stronger than your usual engine braking, to the point where my land rover colleague swore that the handbrake was binding on the back wheels after taking it out for a spin himself. I have checked this by simply jacking up the vehicle and letting off the handbrake, then trying to roll the wheels, and they appear to be free as a bird.
One hindsight I did have was that I needed to of done this in reverse, as its only in reverse that you can feel the car braking if not accelerating. I'll repeat the aforementioned test while the vehicle is in reverse, but if this proves negative then I have to say it feels transmission / diff like, although in my simple head I would expect a diff problem to have the same impact going forwards or backwards?


Onto the last issue....
There is a very loud 'buzzing' coming from the engine bay when the ignition is turned on. This remains when the engine is running, although its just obviously much harder to hear.
I have traced it as best I can to the fuel pump area, and am fairly confident its a mechanical device, probably a solenoid. But beyond that, I cant isolate exactly where its coming from. Again this might not be an issue par se, but its fairly loud (I can easily record it and attach it to the thread if that's possible?) and again my landy friend has had a lot of rough cars in the past and has never had one that made that noise before.


I'm at the point of taking this vehicle into a garage to see what's up with it, but we bought the car on a whim as a convenience factor for myself, and as a gaurentee for the potential bad weather and snow. I don't want to spend a fortune fixing it, and if possible doing the work myself would be preferential, but know what the issues are in the first place has got me stumped

If anyone does have any insight as to what any of the above might be, it would certainly be much appreciated!

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Hippo said:

This ere vcu un transmission problem… If yer tratter gets cross axled yer stuck. ound: 1 spinning front un 1 spinning rear wheel renders yer tratter a shed. This is coz power goes to the wheels wiv the least grip, front un rear. If it had locking front un rear diffs then no problem. Lock em up un orf yer goes. If it has traction control then this will abs pulse the brakes on the spinning wheels, allowing power to go to the wheels wiv the grip (the one not spinning) on the same axle.

Freelanders are completely different as they is betterer. The front wheels turn slightly faster to make it feel more like a front wheel drive road car. This removes the vagueness of the steering you see on traditional bulky rusty 4x4’s. The front wheels are driven by the engine, gearbox then the ird (fixed ratio transfer box). While this is happening the rear wheels follow along un turn due to the road going by. The ratio of front to rear is important. The vcu located in between the prop shafts slips most of the time whilst on road. If the difference in speed of the front to rear prop shaft increases above a certain amount, then a sheering effect happens wiv in the vcu, causing the silicon to sort of seize up, or thicken. The plates inside the vcu sort of lock together, un power from the front prop is transferred to the rear prop. Hence all 4 wheels is driven by the engine/gearbox/ird. Coupled wiv traction control to brake pulse spinning wheels, un a light body work wiv out a rusty chassis, un you start to see why Freelanders is so good orf road, fer what they is. Now in practise it’s often said that Freelanders are 60% front, 95% front or some other figure that we dun’t have proof of which describes the ratio of drive to the front/rear wheels under normal conditions. Somewhere there’s an equilibrium value of ratio split, but we don’t know for sure what it is. Hence me suspicions over the figures. The later ratio ird’s (2001 model year onwards – started late 2000) stopped vcu’s locking up so much. If yer gets a td4 or v6 then it will have the later ratio, which is smaller than the old ratio. Hence betterer as it means the front un rear wheels turn at a closer ratio to each other. If yer gets an L series diesel or 1.8 petrol then it will have the old less betterer ratio, that int as kind to the transmission. Unless someone has updated it to the later ration. Driving a Freelander wiv a seized vcu on tarmac will have the effect of transmission wind up. Something has to give. Normally it's the ird or/and the rear diff. A costly repair if not spotted before it happens.

Vcu’s can fail by going open circuit permanently, or seizing. If seizing then this puts permanent transmission wind up in yer transmission. The ird and/or the rear diff will then fail. If yer does the torque test below in ma vid this will give you an idea if yer vcu is ok. 32mm nut. Be prepared for a faulty vcu and test before the repair cost goes up.

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"If your Freelander feels "tight" or it appears the brakes are binding, especially when reversing on full lock, this means your existing VCU is past its servicable life and you should change it as soon as possible. A damaged VCU put massive strain on the rest of your transmission line, causing the IRD unit, rear diff and gearbox to wear at a hugely accelerated rate, and will cause a very costly failure of these parts. A VCU's servicable life span is usually no more than 70k miles, but it can be a lot less (we have seen cars with failures at 30k miles) depending on how the car has been driven.

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Dave_landy said:

Thanks again guys - I'll keep you posted with how I get on.

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