Wrong Gear Indication

My Freelander 1 2.5 Auto shows N on the dash display and the LED next to N on the auto shifter regardless of what gear I am in. Does anyone know what might cause this?

This is the second post on this subject in a couple of days.
At a guess, the TCM could be the cause. Or some breakdown on the CAN bus.

The LED's by the gear lever are powered via the switch on top of the auto, which the gear lever controls as yer move it. Separate LED's illuminate depending on the lever position, which in turn moves the switch. If yer moving the gear lever and the LED's by the gear lever don't illuminate to show this, one would think the switch int switching position correctly.

Hippo said:

The LED's by the gear lever are powered via the switch on top of the auto, which the gear lever controls as yer move it. Separate LED's illuminate depending on the lever position, which in turn moves the switch. If yer moving the gear lever and the LED's by the gear lever don't illuminate to show this, one would think the switch int switching position correctly.

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That would make sense. However how can the TCM select the correct solenoid valves, if the switch isn't telling the TCM which gear has been requested?

Nodge68 said:

That would make sense. However how can the TCM select the correct solenoid valves, if the switch isn't telling the TCM which gear has been requested?

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When the gear lever moves it controls the switch on top of the auto via the cable that connects to the bottom of the auto. The wiring oft this switch controls which LED illuminates by the gear lever. The same signals are fed to the auto's computer. Additionally the auto's computer receives a second set of signals from the sensors mounted by the gear lever. They also report gear lever position.

Some of the FL1 auto problems we face are a bit mad. Like this one being able to drive ok even thought the lever position on the dash is wrong. The auto's computer must be able to put up with this to a certain extent, but usually it would fail to drive. I guess it's down to how serious the problem is and if it's able to determine the lever sensor signals are ok, even though the LED signals are reported wrong. I would assume there must be some decision making logic looking after this in the auto's computer.

We normally only come across this sort of problem intermittently. I normally eggspect the FL1 drives fine until something happens, then it loses drive. The lever position on the dash will report incorrectly and/or the lever won't control the FL1 anymore. Restart the FL1 and it works ok until next time. On this occasion that hasn't happened although I was suspicious of this being the case. The auto's computer has the ability to raise gear lever plausibility error codes if it detects the signals report incorrectly. It can be hit and miss with faults like this. The auto's computer doesn't seem to have that many fault codes to choose from, if it chooses to display one. Hence why we don't always get codes for issues like bumps when changing gear.

This particular FL1 has some strange faults. To me it's as if there's more than one fault, which looks to be the case. The one thing that stood out to me was the lever LED issue. The circuit is simple in nature but it's right for the job. Easy starting point for most peeps with a meter which can read voltage and/or resistance. You never know yer luck. Solving this problem may fix other issues.