Cheers for the help ladies and gents, a little update. I have cleaned and tightened the connection, and that seemed to work - well that problem has not re-occurred for a little while (touch wood) BUT a new problem has started and I have a little feeling it’s linked. So here goes, Volume 2:
Last week I pulled up in the car park to get breakfast on the way to the quarry and when I got in and started there was nothing, like before, dead as a doornail. So I fiddled with the wire and still nothing, but when I turned the key a little icon (a car with a key inside it – I now know it’s the immobiliser light) appeared on the dash, I have never seen it before or since.
In the heat of the moment I did what any agitated landy mechanic does and hit things until it worked – I found disconnecting the battery and reconnecting worked, anyway we started and on the way we went.
Once on site I had a little play and noticed the following, when I turned the key all the way, there was nothing, but when released, it started. This is about the same time I realised I am in trouble. About an hour later I came back to the landy to move it back to the office, it turned over, but would not start.
Cut a long story short (and an ever longer journey being towed behind a CAT D9 through a quarry), I realised it was the fuel system as it would not bump start. So piece by piece I removed it until I found the culprit – Fuel stop solenoid, I removed the pin inside and away we went. The catch is I now can only stop the engine by stalling, which is less than ideal.
As I was working away at the time I went to a local 4x4 garage that got a new stop solenoid for me, they replaced the part, but it would still not turn over. Get the multi-meter out on it and you find it’s only drawing 9v instead of 12v – hence the reason why it is not opening.
The garages immediate thought was immobiliser (get the circuit diagram out and you can see that the stop solenoid feeds straight into the immobiliser spider), this makes sense to me because of the issues I had in the car park that morning.
As far as I am aware the spider is buried in the dash somewhere, so I am loathed to rip it all out and it not be that issue. I am going to ask my local mechanic what he thinks as I am not altogether sure yet. But I feel if this is the problem then I have two solutions – 1) add my own live feed from solenoid to ignition and bypass spider, 2) use Landrover spider bypass to well, bypass the spider (would this work?!).
, immobiliser relays do fuel and starter and suffer from dry joints!
