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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 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.

Like and subscribe, donate if you can, Patreon.

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.

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Floor Pan Repair on a Range Rover Classic (Post #676) 10/20/2024

In this installment I start getting the rust sorted out for the installation of the floor pan. The cross members have quite a lot of rust on them. I used the wire wheel, a flappy sandpaper disk, and even a cutting disk to remove the rust.

The removal went pretty well. It took a few hours. The lip of the floor where the panel was cut out required wire wheel work as well. This was just a LOT of grinding.

I decided to setup and use my sandblasting cabinet. With the new air compressor it worked great. I was really pleased with the result. So much so that I’ll be building a rolling base for it. That way I can store it when I’m not using it and pull it out to make it more convenient. The lamp inside the cabinet has seen better days so I bought a cheap under cabinet lamp that I will install.

At the beginning of the video I briefly reinforce that I still have a parasitic draw. I’m going to experiment with some solution. One, isolating the alternator. I’m still fairly convinced that the alternator’s diode pack has failed. It’s happened before.

Second, I’m going to test for the draw using the “Pull One Fuse While Watching an Amp Meter” method. It takes forever (30 minutes) but should show what’s going on.

There will be a whole video for that.

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

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Diagnosing an Alternator on a Range Rover Classic (Post #675) 10/13/2024

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There’s a lot in this video. I get the handle on the lift gate installed. And I diagnose the alternator issues. It becomes pretty clear early in the video that I haven’t wrenched in a long, long time.

I get the lift gate handle installed first. The spring failed, if you remember, and I sourced a selection from Amazon and got lucky there was one in there that, with a little adjustment, fit perfectly. I got it all put back together and reassembled all the bits using stainless steel hardware.

It feels good to have something finally done. It was a little task but it was necessary.

Then I began to investigate the alternator. The Range Rover just died in the driveway the last time I ran her. The battery was D-E-D, dead.

I removed the alternator, let’s call it the NEW alternator because it is. This took way too long. I struggled greatly. It was my conclusion that the NEW alternator had a failed diode pack. I’ve seen it before.

Once I got it removed I took it to NAPA to get it tested. Turns out Moore NAPA where the last two alternators were replaced would not look at it. They pointed me to Norman NAPA which is not a corporate store. At some point there’s going to be a pissing contest about who owes me for a core.

The Norman store pointed me to C&P Auto Electric. It just so happens they are one of the last establishments still fixing alternators and starters in the Oklahoma City metro area. Christian tested both alternators and under load. He reported both were working as expected. He said the diode pack would make a loud noise if it were failing. I asked him what he charged and he said nothing. I was very thankful and insisted I pay him something for the trouble. I thanked him for the help, gave him $5.00(US) and told him to buy a milk shake on the way home.

I brought both of them back to the house. Something Christian said, “You probably have another broken wire somewhere telling the alternator not to charge the battery.” Well it turns out that was good advise. I looked at the wiring for the back of the alternator and noticed there was a wire that was just a shadow of it’s former self.

I fixed it, got everything hooked back up and got her started up and as you will see in the next video she is charging the battery again. I’m still pretty sure I have parasitic drain somewhere. I’m testing that overnight and I’ll have to sort it out if its still there.

The last bit of the video I show you what my wife’s brother-in-law John cooked up for me on the engraving laser at his college. I had a crazy idea to make a logo for Tumbleweed Garage. I’ve mentioned his Youtube channel before. Any way, I drew up this logo from one the Willys Overland company had for their automobiles and John burned it on some anodized aluminum.

I had him burn some of my logo too! It was fun to do and now I’m wondering if I really need one of those in my shoppe. (probably not, too expensive).

I’m off all week for “vacation”. Mrs. Okierover has started calling the shoppe a “resort” because that’s where you go when you are on vacation.

Like and subscribe. Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.

https://youtu.be/rvntDd87GBI
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