Series 3 electrical fault

New to this site but need help with an electrical fault on my Series 3. Indicators and horn work ok when i start the Landy but when i switch on the lights they stop working, the main beam doesnt work and the sidelights and indicators come on!!! This was intermittant but now the fault is permanent. Any bright ideas would be appreciated. I found that if i pressed the horn a few times everything would start working normally but now this does not fix the problem.

There's a short somewhere. Take off the front grill and check the connections in front of the radiator. Also check any connections beside the battery including any relays and clean the wiring behind the headlamps of crud and inspect- be careful with these they can be brittle and corroded. Check the fuses and make sure the fuses are seated in the clips.

Check and clean the earths for the headlights should be on a stud on radiator panel below bonnet catch .

I suspect that is shared with the horn earth, the horn is probably providing a retrun path because of the poor conncetion at the earth terminal.

Thanks for the advice. I will check this weekend and report back cheers Mark

you may need a new switch and try to get a better earth. old landrovers are bad for wiring and electrical faults.

My first port of call would be the earth connections as others have already said. These odd, many faceted symptoms are most often down to a simple bad earth. There is a common earth point behind the grille with several wires, start there. Dismantle, clean and polish to shiny bare metal, grease and re-assemble.

Thanks for all the replies. As you all said it turned out to be a bad earth behind grill. At last I can now go out after dark......

Its obviouly worth cleaning up all these earth connections, but they go to various panels and some are steel and some ally so you also get poor connections between the panels and back to the chassis. I've now run earth wires from each of the earth points back to a termial block behind the dash then a larger earth wire to the battery so I know each circuit has a good earth. I used one of these and ran one wire to the battery:
https://www.screwfix.com/p/8-way-ea...gclsrc=aw.ds&dclid=CN-vxf6Bo9gCFS6pUQods0oJxQ