Category: batteries

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Diagnosing Parasitic Draw on a Range Rover Classic: Part 1 (Post #678) 11/10/2024

Parasitic draw. Nothing is worse than electric problems with your vehicle. Nothing. Nope…not even that….or that. Electronic problems top the list. Okay, I googled it and electric problems weren’t even on the list on some sites. It’s numero uno on my list so let’s run with that.

In this installment I set out to the source of my parasitic draw. Seems like this is a common issue with older cars and British cars in particular. This is not the first time for me. A few episodes ago I diagnosed a possible failed alternator. When the diode pack fails in an alternator it can lead to dead batteries.

I currently have the alternator isolated so I know my issue isn’t that. I setup the multimeter in series with my battery and got it placed on the windshield so I could watch the setting change.

I started with 1.9 amps of draw. I pulled every fuse in the fuse block to no avail. I then started on the auxiliary fuses under the passenger seat. There is a row of covered fuses, I check all those. There is also two fuses stuck on the side. Turns out one of these was the culprit. When I pulled the red 10 amp fuse the draw dropped to .01 amps.

I have 4 manuals and one of them had the fuses identified. This fuse was the fuel pump. Now that’s a bit of a puzzler. The fuel pump is OFF when the key is off. I spent a lot of time thinking about it. And I didn’t come up with anything. I’ll need to look at the electrical circuit and see what comes up. I’m also going to call JagGuy and get his take on it.

This is part 1 of I’m not sure how many parts. As many as it takes…

This weekend was the Marine Corps’ 249th birthday. I give a shout out to my friends and family who were Marines. I also gave a shout out to all the veterans in my family. There were a bunch.

Marines, my grandfather William Alvy Stephens served during the Banana Wars after WW1 and my uncle Ben Johnson on my mom’s side served during Vietnam. I also served with several friends who also served with me in the USMCR and went on to retire, MGySgt Jason Rogers, USMCR (ret.) and Col. Mike Gann, USMC (ret.). My friend Howard McKinnis also served in the Marine Corps during Vietnam. My wife has several cousins who also served and retired from our beloved Corps.

I come from a long line of veterans. Both my dad and uncle served in the Navy. Another uncle on my mom’s side served in the Navy. My cousin Victoria retired from the Army and she had a son who also served in the Army. My cousin Dan served in the Air Force and a son of his served in the Navy. Many of my Great Uncles served during WW2 in the Merchant Marines and in the US Army Air Corps. Brave men one and all. I’m sure I could go on to name all my cousins who are married to military men but I’ll stop here.

Thank you for your service to our great nation.

Like and subscribe, thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.

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Diagnosing a Bad Battery on a Range Rover Classic (Post #677) 11/4/2024

A thumbnail.

Yep, you read that right…bad battery. Two weeks ago that battery was fine. It held a charge…or seemed to. But this weekend it decided to cross over to the big battery charger in the sky. The only thing different this week from previous weeks, was I left the battery connected.

I had removed the alternator from the system by pulling the charge cable. So only the rest of the vehicle would be the only thing parasitically draining it. I didn’t think I’d have to work 32 hours out of 48 that 1st weekend, so the experiment was a little skewed.

So when I put the meter on it and it registered 0.00 volts, I was a bit bummed. I they decided I’d try to charge it with trickle charger. I hooked it up and the needle pegged to full. The alligator clips started getting hot. My thought, “That’s not right.”

It wasn’t right. I hauled the battery down to O’Reilly’s and had them test it on their fancy tester. (I need to buy one of these, hmmm….eBay?) It said the terminals were not connected. We guessed a dead cell was shorting it across the terminals. Not sure about that, but they weren’t connected.

So $242.00(US) later…when did batteries start being so expensive? Damn it seems like the last battery I bought for the Big White Bus was like 60 bucks.

So I dropped the battery in and test fired the engine. She fired up no issue.

I also ordered a new negative terminal. The off the shelf ones just suck. I’m going to try the same style my F-150 has. They work pretty well. The only thing left is to put terminals on the three ground cables. I’ll figure that out this weekend.

So next week I’ll test for the vampiric parasitic draw. Check back next week for hopefully some results.

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Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.

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Footwell Repair Part 3: Floor Panel Repair, Welding (Post #662) 7/13/2024

We got a big break in the weather. A cold front hit and we got a lovely lightning show along with the fireworks. And we got some cooler weather. The shop wasn’t crazy hot today and won’t be all weekend. So I’m going to take advantage of it and get some work done.

In this post my goal was to get the floor pan welded up. I first had to fix a small patch to the bottom corner. I made a template and got the steel cut. It welded up pretty well. I was pretty happy with the results.

Then I started on the floor panel. I first drilled some holes for the plug welds. This reinforced my need for a drill press. I really want a drill press.

Due to the odd shape of the floor. My panel does not fit very well. Off camera I tried several things to get the panel to line up and contour to the floor. I didn’t have much success. And getting the panel to stay put while I welded, well, I was trying to hold it and weld it. I struggled greatly.

So I decided to put a few self-tapping screws in the panel. These held the panel as expected. I put my hand-made plug weld bit to good use and started welding. I had some success all across the bottom. I didn’t have much luck with the welds near the transmission tunnel but I did finally get some welds to stick.

At this point I realized my welding helmet stopped darkening. This could have gone really badly for me. I did weld two plugs without darkening. I’m glad I noticed, because that kind of eye damage is the real deal.

At this point I’m going to used the self tapping screws to pull the two panels together. I’ll make the plug welds in the holes and then pull the self tapping screws and fill those with welds. At least I have a plan and I am relatively confident this will work.

I’ll then fill the gap on the bottom side with seal sealer. Paint everything with a couple more coats and then I’ll seal it all up with rattle can truck bed liner.

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.

https://youtu.be/jHhHI75723A
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Footwell Repair Part 2: Floor Panel Repair, Well Sort Of (Post #661) 7/6/2024

What a day.

I started out with all the intention I could muster to complete the floor pan. Unfortunately Fate had another plan for the day.

My plan started out solid. Paint the panels and while it dried see if I could get the Scion started and moved. The Scion as you may (or may not) remember is my son’s first car and he was still driving it until he was rear-ended by a mid-90s model Chevy pickup. The truck was moving at 35-40mph when he hit Rooster sitting still in bumper to bumper traffic. The pickup was completely disabled. The Scion had it’s rear tucked under and was touching the tires.

The though was it wouldn’t take that long to get the wheel wells pushed off the tires. I was wrong. The more I fought with it the hotter the day got and I finally reached my limit. So I went inside to cool off. I was watching the Germany-Denmark match when I got a call from Mrs. Okierover telling me the Honda Pilot with all of the grandchildren in tow would not start.

There is a whole long drama about a forgotten cell phone and a melt down of worry and a lot of really important details about how the battery got run down were left out. The names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Here we go.

  • Grandchild #1 left her cell phone at bathroom break an hour back up the road.
  • My oldest son who was following along in his car take said grand back to her phone.
  • Grandchild #2 melts down with worry.
  • Mrs. Okierover tells him to go sit in the car and calm down.
  • Grandchild #2 thinks he starts the car but places it in accessory mode and proceeds to sit in the car for more than 30 minutes.
  • Dead battery.
  • Not confident of the traveler’s ability to purchase and install a new battery I begin googling likely reasons of dead battery not aware of the 30 minute accessory episode.
  • Eventually Answers Online mechanic calls wife and diagnoses dead battery.
  • Oldest son returns and we attempt to jump battery.
  • Battery is buried under the air intake and only the positive is visible.
  • Plastic parts removed we finally ground to an engine lift point.
  • Car is started.

I learned a lot watching Law and Order: Criminal Intent and I use all those skills to interrogate everyone after they all arrive home. I had the battery tested and it was good, just needed a charge. I also watched a video about placing a new mount which is easy to reach for jumping. So I installed that M6 1.0 bolt and marked it for future reference.

So long story longer, the day was a complete loss. The following day I did get the Scion sorted out and back to running thanks to a sawzall (aka reciprocating saw), a floor jack, a 4 pound hammer, and gravity.

Next week end we’ll get more done ON THE BIG WHITE BUS…hopefully.

Happy Independence Day.

Thanks for reading, like and subscribe, and Happy Rovering.

https://youtu.be/gHdUjYCurx4
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Diagnostics, Not Just for Breakfast Anymore (Post #490) 4/24/2014

Florida Orange Juice Growers Association had a slogan in the 1970’s, “Orange juice, it’s not just for breakfast anymore.” It was used to encourage people to drink orange juice during the day, not just at breakfast time. It’s clever and a lesson for us. Diagnosing a problem should not stop with only one solution, keep diagnosing through the problem.

Diagnostics is the root of what we do to fix our Land Rovers. If you can’t diagnose the problem you can’t fix it. This was made painfully financially clear to me last night. Continue reading “Diagnostics, Not Just for Breakfast Anymore (Post #490) 4/24/2014”

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Helpful Tips for My Helpful Tips (Post #404) 10/21/2013

Ken Arciga of Los Angeles, California, sent me an email recently. He wanted to thank me for the site and to share some comments back with me on things he’d learned and tried when working on some of the same projects for his 1995 Range Rover Classic expedition project vehicle.

He has many of the same issues I have with the fuel economy and is yet another “old Rover” guy looking to swap in a diesel. He uses his Rangie in typical fashion to drop off the kids but at 4$(US) a gallon its expensive.

I must say, excellent color choice 😉

Before we get to the email, my first observation, Ken has the cleanest engine bay I’ve seen in a LONG time. Ken, you’ll have to tell us the secret to that in another email. His email after the jump…

Hi Eric,

Pleasure to meet you, thanks for putting up your site and sharing. Wanted to share notes on a couple of things I just went through:

1. STEERING SHAFT – Looking at your picture, my steering shaft was also put in the same way your old one was, is the part with the rubber band (crash/break away joint?) was on the steering pump side. So that is the same direction I put in my new one. However I had my truck in for alignment and the independent dealer noted my steering shaft was installed backwards!
Sure enough I looked in the manual and it is backwards – that rubber band part is supposed to be on the steering wheel side. I bet it was probably put in either way as these manuals aren’t always accurate.

2. 2ND BATTERY – I kind of did what you did with my P/S pump reservoir and bracket, however for the air box I just drilled a couple of holes to move it over and was able to get the 2nd battery to fit – with the HORN OFF.

3. CC VACUUM PUMP – I ended up not wanting to go through the work to relocate my cruise control vacuum pump unit (my cruise control isn’t working either) but the battery was pressing up against it which I didn’t want – so I ended up taking a little metal off the radiator bracket so the battery could be positioned over enough to give the CC Vacuum enough room.

Anyway thanks for your info, reading up on some of your stuff that I still need to tackle!
-Ken

Steering shaft. My Range Rover was a front end wreck before I got it. When it was put back together there is a good chance this was put in backwards. With that in mind, there’s probably a very good reason one way is preferred than the other. Knowing my OCD will not let that stand, I’ll probably switch mine to match the manual. Great find.

Bracket. Nicely done. I think the bracket I used was from a Discovery I. I read that online quite a while ago. So I just went down to Rover Cannibal and picked one up. I like Ken’s bracket, simple and functional.

After getting such high praise and being a generally curious guy (and seeking permission to publish him) I followed up with another email. He sent the above picture of his excellent Range Rover and the following description of things he has already dealt with. He wants to take his Range Rover to Peru someday and has thoughts of a shake-down expedition a little closer to home in Baja California.

Here is what it looks like so far – I started with suspension (OME 2″ springs, nitrocharger shocks), front radius arms and adj. pan hard to get steering back, wheels, tires, P/S pump (PAIN in the butt, Cardone rebuild didn’t work), gearbox (Meridien – LOOOOOOOSE but I tightened up) and shaft, got the 2nd battery in but saving up for the kit to wire it, oil pan gasket and probably doing the head gasket next (leaking of course : )

Just finishing up the fluids – have the trans pan kit and fluids, transfer case to do, just got my LR grease for the swivel housings. A ton more plans.

I don’t know how to weld but contemplating learning so I can build my own bumpers and skid plates – really a big part of this is to fix stuff and to learn on a vehicle I’ve always wanted since I was a teenager.

Rack, lights….this list goes on!

Anyway thanks again for sharing your stuff, only people that dig into the nuts and bolts I think can really appreciate the details!

Ain’t that the truth?!?
Like myself, I imagine he has expedition dreams on a domestic beer budget. While I am worried about breaking down in my own STATE! he is contemplating a long trip to another continent. Excellent.

Thanks for contributing Ken. These are great tips and I felt they had to be shared. Thanks for letting me put them up for every one.

Thanks for reading, and Happy Rovering.

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