Category: electrical problems

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Diagnosing Parasitic Draw on a Range Rover Classic: Part 3 (Post #680) 11/25/2024

If you’ve been following along I’ve been trying to find the parasitic draw for quite some time. I finally put my head on straight and dug in.

Having found the circuit that was giving me the trouble it was then time to call in the brains and ask some questions. So I called JagGuy. Mike is a genius and understands more about the physical universe than is possible for most mere mortals.

In our chat he said it about the time the thought was pulling up in the driveway of my mind, “You need to check your relay.” He said he’d look at the schematics (which he said were terrible by the way). It indeed came down to the relay. I have the WRONG relay installed.

I don’t remember when I came up with the fact the OEM relay failed. I do remember bringing it into my house were it sat on my end table and then in the drawer of my end table and then moved to the office? and then lost forever. SO I suspected the relay, I just forgot why.

So back to “the wrong relay” this is the one I had installed…..

What I should have installed was this relay…

You can see the slight difference. The 87a relay has 87a hot. the 87 87 relay is NOT hot all the time. How he came up with that I will never know. What he shared was the 87a relay might be the most common relay in the “relay world”. He has purchased and installed 1000’s of them making his trailer wiring converter boxes for military to civilian service [xm381.com]. He said they are common on fuel injections too if I remember the conversation.

Anyway, he said the far LESS common 87 87 relay is the one I needed. I promptly ordered one from Atlantic British an hour before he texted me back all the great details.

So there you have it. Something as simple as that can disable you. It is good to know that your can use an 87a in a pinch if your 87 87 fails. But you will want to pull it before you park it for any length of time.

UPDATE: The part has arrived and I’m going to test this weekend to confirm by parasitic draw is gone!

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.

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Diagnosing Parasitic Draw on a Range Rover Classic: Part 2 (Post #679) 11/18/2024

The Grounding.

Let the grounding begin!

When adversity strikes, that’s when you have to be the most calm. Take a step back, stay strong, stay grounded and press on. – LL Cool J

Authority is supposedly grounded in wisdom, but I could see from a very early age that authority was only a system of control. – Joe Strummer, The Clash

I’m quite grounded. – Enrique Iglesias

Like Enrique…the Big White Bus is now very well grounded. In this installment I install the grounding cables from the battery to the body and the frame. Very important things to have grounded.

The driver’s side is well grounded too. Those ground points to support the ignition system and the engine being grounded to the body. They are lovely.

The passenger side, I couldn’t say that before I finished this job. The ground points probably had not been removed and freshened up since it was wrecked by the previous owner some time in 2000.

The job was not difficult. I got side tracked with a bunch of rust and that removal made this video creep over the coveted 24 minute mark. I actually don’t know what the best length of video is. If you have a sweet spot, comment and let me know.

Three points in this job were the control module for the electric fans. The body which you connect to the fender. And finally the frame connection just behind the recovery points on the front of the frame.

All it took was a little wire wheeling with the Dremel. Cleaning he frame connector. I used a little dielectric grease between the metals. I have no fantasy that this grease will still be there even a year from now.

I found some rust and I knocked that out with some wire wheeling and applying the rust encapsulating paint. Maybe if the painting gods smile that will help keep the rust away.

That’s about it for this week. Like and subscribe and I look forward to your feedback.

Thanks for readying 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.

Like and subscribe, donate if you can, Patreon.

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.

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The Big White Bus Will Not Start (Post #624) September 18, 2023

Fuel pump

Well, awesome. The Big White Bus won’t start.

I have fired it up once since I parked it in my newly constructed shoppe 5 years ago. I guess I should have expected there would be “issues”. But I wasn’t expecting the issue to be this one.

Mr. Fisher came over and we diagnosed the issue. We started with checking the power at the pump. As you may be aware, when you turn the key over it powers the pump briefly. So if you just “turn on the key” and go back there to check the voltage you won’t find any. That’s why it takes either some seriously creative use of a volt meter or you get one of the bestest friends to come over and turn the key for you. We had voltage all the way through the wiring harness.

We then confirmed we have spark from the ignition system. I pulled the number 1 plug and with a screwdriver I grounded it and watched for spark. You can buy a fancy spark tester, matter of fact I think I own one. I have no idea where it is though. Spark confirmed.

So we have two of the three things (Meatloaf would say that “ain’t bad”) to make the vehicle run. Air and Spark. Now why aren’t we getting fuel.

I pulled the gas line off at the regulator on the back side top of the engine and had Mr. Fisher crank the ignition. We should have had gas squirting out if it worked. It did not. This fit with me NOT hearing the pump run when the ignition was turned over.

The only thing left was to pull the fuel pump and do a visual inspection. What I found was not expected. I said, “Wow.” a lot in the video. There were several parts that were obviously degrading due to being submerged in petrol for so long. There was visible rust on the steel parts as well. Generally the pump was in a terrible state. I was not aware that petrol would do that to those parts. The only gas I ever put in my Classic is 100% real gas, unless I am in Texas where they only sell ethanol (at least the last time I was buying gas there). You would expect ethanol to eventually separate and turn to water. You can read all about that on the Road Guardians website.

I will be replacing the fuel pump and have ordered the part from Atlantic British. I found some that were cheaper on Amazon. But my skepticism and need to have it delivered before next October weighed heavily on my decision where to purchase. The pictures all looked like the pumps were manufactured in the same place. Same white plastic. Same blue plugs.

Fuel pump
PRC9409K

If you look on Amazon you’ll see the pumps look like the same ones. If I had unlimited funds or sponsorship, I’d buy one from everyone and do a side-by-side comparison.

All this “BUY IT NEW” has me thinking about what this would cost if we just fixed the pump. All you need to do is replace the pump in the collector can (that bottom part). I’ll do a post about that in the coming weeks.

So…do I drain the tank too? If the gasoline HAS turned to varnish I should probably put some treatment in there. I’m thinking I’m gonna add a silly amount of STP Fuel Injector cleaner in that tank. I can say, WHEN I get it running It will run for quite a while before I shut her down. I want to give the truck plenty of time to dislodge any crap in the fuel lines. I’m also guessing I’ll need to swap the fuel filter too.

If its not one thing, its another. It really, never ends.

Mr. Fisher also brought over his Viair Compressor. We spent some time looking at it and checking out all its features.

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.

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Fender Repair Part 6, Reassembling the Fender and Mud Flap (Post #623) September 9, 2023

What?

Finishing up.

In this video I’m wrapping up the quarter panel rust tasks. I got a rattle can of “bed liner” sprayed on. It took the entire can! I will probably apply another application just to be sure.

The fender install went “smoothly” until I realized later that I forgot to plug the light cluster in. So I got to do that job twice. You only get to see the excruciatingly painful initial time. I saw a funny meme. The scene is a spring install with the narrator saying something to the effect that doing a job required on both sides of the vehicle.

  • First time 2 days and 89 hours.
  • Second time 29 minutes.

Ain’t that the truth though! So it’s been a hot minute (as my kids say) since I reinstalled a fender. So it went not quite so well the first time. I did cuss some. But that’s the nature of working on cars after all, is it not?

I talk about having to remove the glass on the passenger (starboard) side to complete the welding that needs to be done on the D pillar. I also talk about how outrageously expensive new window seals will be.

I did watch a couple of videos on how to do it. One of them is listed here:

The the hell is “duck water”??

So you can see getting the window AND seal out in one piece is going to save me a LOT of money.

Lastly I tried to start the Big White Bus. After charging the batter over night, she would not start. I got one cough, but otherwise a whole lot of nothing. The relay is working, but I am not hearing the pump run. I’ll need some help with diagnosing spark and electrics at the pump. So I put this off until next weekend when I can either get my buddy Larry over, or press my son into service.

I also tried out a new camera. My son had a GoPro Hero 5 just sitting around so I

confiscated it indefinitely borrowed

asked him if I could use it. Yeah, he’s not likely to get it back. I bought a new SIM for it. The SIM I was using doesn’t work in my Hero 11 and gives me a message about that. The Hero 5 did not give me a similar message so I thought it was good to go. It was not. So you missed out on 5 minutes of riveting footage of me walking back and forth in front of the camera and using a dustbin to sweep up and spraying bedliner. I’m sure it was the difference in this week’s video being a smashing success. Que sera, sera.

Thank you for reading and Happy Rovering.

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Current Progress (Post #594) 12/14/2021

In the latest installment, I chat about my current progress on getting the Big White Bus back on the road. I had to take a week off for family coming in for the holiday, and Mrs. Okierover and I both got bronchitis that decided to hang on for 3 weeks (you can hear the Stevie Nicks in my voice). That slowed work on the to-do list. This weekend I’ll probably need the new heater in the shop as it should start getting colder here on the Southern Plains.

In the video, I show the closed cell neoprene installed. I talk about a small missed part on the heater box install. Also talk about getting a new seat controller ECU and getting the seats out. A few words about adjusting the door handle for the driver’s side rear door.

Then instead of shutting up, I drone on more about my desire to have a new bumper, a storage box/bed, and installing D-rings.

I know the video work needs improvement and as I torture you as you watch them make more and more they should improve. When I’m a big interwebs video star you can say, “I remember when that bum first got started. Man those early videos sucked.”

Your feedback is always appreciated.

Thanks for reading/watching, click and subscribe, and Happy Rovering.

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