Land rover stuff - gah where's the soap!

nitro_warrior · Post by **nitro_warrior** » Sun Feb 17, 2008 11:57 pm

Sorry to sully the good Lada forum with land rover stuff once again!

But I have a problem with my brother's diesel Landy and it's cold starting abilities. Rather lack there of! I know that loads of you are diesel whizzes and your advice is sound so if you think you can help follow the yellow brick road.... (blue link to difflock...)

Difflock

GadgetBoy · Post by **GadgetBoy** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 12:21 am

Pretty certain that's a relay but it's also a timer IIRC. The ballast should be in-line with the glow plugs.

The ballast is just a resistor. Any circuit can only sustain the current of it's most resitice component. You can have a 130W halogen bulb in series with a 5w side light and the side light will be right but the halogen will barely glow.

Put 12V from the battery direct to the glow feed for 20 secs and then try start her.

Did you get the diesel distrubutor checked out? If not do ..... it's the governor as well. There is nothing more violent than an un-governed diesel!

crb247 · Post by **crb247** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 6:01 am

I would redo that burnt stretch of wire first. Especially the connector on the burned wire. I almost burned up one of the transports i drove due to a bad connector that had enough resistance to create enough heat to catch the cab insulation on fire. I would also check the glowplugs (disconnected from the glowplug wiring harness) one by one with a digital multimeter set on ohmmeter to see if one has grounded itself to earth causing an extreme current draw. The silver box definately looks like a relay and if the wiring got that hot it (the relay) should be replaced as well. Check to make sure there are no shorts to earth on the glowplug B+ harness as well.

Neil Chowney · Post by **Neil Chowney** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 7:37 pm

The advice is sound about the wiring, redo first. Make sure all the connectors are tight as loose ones will overheat as they will not be able to carry the current for the glowplugs which is high.

If one glowplug starts to fail it will bring all the others down to its level as its internal resistance will be wrong. This will make the glow plugs inefficient and not glow hot enough to heat the air in the cylinders.

nitro_warrior · Post by **nitro_warrior** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 4:53 pm

Ok guys thanks for the advice. Had a chance to look at it today.

The relay needs to be replaced, I was pulling more loom through to get a bit more cable to play with and one of the terminals sheared off completely with absolutly no force required. and the other terminals look rusty and not too far off a similar fate. I'll order a new relay on Monday (2 as it happens cause the one next to it looks ropey too)

In the meantime I did as you suggested David and connected the glow plug circuit directly to a battery (jump leads from the Niva) 20 seconds later the Land rover started immediatly and ran nicely. So i'm happy with the glow plugs.

A new relay some fresh connectors and i'll let you know what happens.

Cheers.

Oh here's a wee pic of the under side of the 2 relays, you can see on the left one a pin missing in the middlwe where it snapped off

GadgetBoy · Post by **GadgetBoy** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 5:03 pm

Don't you just love Lucas electrics!

nitro_warrior · Post by **nitro_warrior** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 6:16 pm

Almost as high quality as Russian parts.
Spent most of yesterday dismantling half the Niva to replace the leaking heater valve and discovered this morning that the lens had fallen out the passenger side headlight

It really defies belief, how one car can constantly remain broken for a such a long period. As soon as one thing is repaired another thing breaks.
It's not just me though... Is it?

GadgetBoy · Post by **GadgetBoy** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 6:32 pm

It's pissed off with you and you know why!

excossack · Post by **excossack** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 6:48 pm

Is that an weather station sitting on the side Donald?

crb247 · Post by **crb247** » Tue Feb 26, 2008 2:12 am

On behalf of the opinion of my better half (she says) I removed my previous post.... as all objects shall not be assigned gender rolls based on their mechanical behavior (little does she know)

nitro_warrior · Post by **nitro_warrior** » Tue Feb 26, 2008 1:31 pm

excossack wrote:Is that an weather station sitting on the side Donald?

Yes. Let's me know how cold it is outside so I can layer appropriatly for my cycle to work.

nitro_warrior · Post by **nitro_warrior** » Wed Feb 27, 2008 1:19 pm

Well i've just ordered a new relay from the Land rover Orphanage and apparently it's not part of the cold start circuit and is more likely the hazard warning relay. Then again it started off as a petrol so who knows how they wired up the new diesel...

Anyway, i'll need to check it is infact the hazard circuit, if so having the full cold start current running through the Hazard relay explains why it went on fire

Then'll I just have to work out why the cold start is leaking in to the hazard light circuit

Electrics. My favourite.

nitro_warrior · Post by **nitro_warrior** » Sat Mar 01, 2008 6:41 pm

Well i've been trying to sort it today and made some progress. It's the classic old vehicle mystery wiring that doesn't match the wiring diagram and has clearly been tinkered with over the years!

First of all there are 2 wires on the glow plug switch, 1 goes to the glow plugs and the other to the live wire of the 6 position (military dial) light switch. The wire (Brown purple tracer) from the switch then goes to that burnt out 6RA relay, and connects to the positive from the battery when the relay is OFF. However the relay can never turn on as the other end of the switch wire (blue orange tracer) isn't connected to anything. Any idea what this wire should attach too? It would be something that would kill the power to the lights and the glow plugs. But I can't think what or why you would want to do that?

For now, seeing as all the realy was doing was permanently connecting the battery + to the supply to the light switch and the glow plug switch, I have just connected them directly together with a short length of wire and a couple of spade connectors, and it seems to start ok. Would be nice to have it wired up right though.

GadgetBoy · Post by **GadgetBoy** » Sat Mar 01, 2008 7:10 pm

I'd stick it back to original as per the wiring diagram.

Zelandeth · Post by **Zelandeth** » Sat Mar 01, 2008 7:32 pm

Think I'd go with Gadget on this one. Mucking around with hacked about electrics is invariably nothing other than frustrating, and tends to lead to headaches and/or fires.

The loom on an old Landie's simple enough that it shouldn't take too long to sort things like this out.

I've chased gremlins like this around a car before, and in the end just cut my losses and pulled half the loom out and started over - think I saved myself time in the end.