I’m going to tell you a story about my L322 Range Rover in the hope it may help someone else out there.
The car was a 2010 4.4 V8 Autobiography “Black” edition. A nice version with a nicer interior.
I’ll give you the events in chronological order.
The Symptoms
It all started with the navigation and radio display occasionally turning off, followed by a slew of warning lights: camera system fault, blind spot system not available, forward alert not available, and sometimes, cruise control and emergency park brake not available.
The indicator on the display would stop working during these episodes, though they were fine outside. After a minute or so, the display would come back on, but the warning lights stayed until the car was restarted.
Initial Diagnosis and Attempts
I called in my local independent Land Rover specialist (indy) and had him plug it in when it was doing it. He cleared 50+ faults and said to come back ASAP when it does it again and hopefully, it would display fewer. Well, I had to only go around the block and five minutes later I was back. This time it had about ten faults. All quite obscure, he said. He wanted to go and “read up” on them and said to talk to him in a few days. I went back a few times and he seemed none the wiser.
Some days it seemed to do it every five minutes. On other days, not at all. For weeks, I tried to pinpoint some kind of common denominator, and finally, I did. It only happened when I was turning right, such as one would on a roundabout or bend. A spirited right turn out of a side road didn’t seem to trigger it. But a gentle roundabout or bend in the road would, without fail. Never left, always right. I could predict it happening in advance with good accuracy.
The indy suggested a low battery might be the cause. I charged it up overnight and it did it again five minutes out of the driveway.
Further Complications
A few days later, the car decided not to recognise the smart key and wouldn’t start. I was lucky it was unlocked. I removed the battery live terminal, earthed it, waited a while, and refitted it again and it worked fine. The next day I wasn’t so lucky. The car wouldn’t unlock. Using the blade on the passenger door revealed that whatever that was connected to didn’t work, so I was locked out. There was no warning about a low key fob battery as once before, but before breaking a window, I went to LR, got a battery, and it worked.
But still, the radio/nav screen went off and rebooted a minute or so later whenever I drove around a right-hand bend.
Getting Nowhere Fast
As the indy didn’t seem much help, I feared if I put it in the main dealer, they would do that main dealer thing of replacing each and every possible thing it could be at great expense when in reality, it might just be a loose plug somewhere.
I took it back to the indy again, who found over 100 faults. After clearing them, another 50 appeared almost immediately. Their main guy, who’s good with this sort of thing, was off that day, so they asked me to bring it back. But before I could, the car died altogether, displaying a “Smart key not recognised” message.
Thinking the battery might be the issue, I replaced it with a proper Varta battery, but the car still wouldn’t start. The indy suggested something loose or disconnected around the camera/nav screen cabling might be the cause. Recalling a previous issue where an unplugged wire fixed the blower motor, we thought it could be a similar oversight.
A Fruitless and Prolonged Investigation
So I left the car with them for further investigation. It sat there week after week, slow because they were spending 1-2 hours on it here and there. They could replicate the fault easily enough, but couldn’t find the source.
What we knew up to then was that the problem was on the medium-speed CAN bus circuit, and it was failing completely, taking out all the things mentioned above. So what they were doing was unplugging modules on that circuit one by one, trying to replicate the fault, and hoping to isolate it that way. This was apparently time-consuming as there was a lot on that circuit and much of it was buried.
The best working theory they came up with was the fuse box, as there was a lot behind it that was part of the unit. However, they had to be coded to the chassis number, so bunging a used one in to see if it worked wasn’t possible. A new one was over £500, and it would be a punt in the dark. What put me off this was they said they had never needed to change one on an L322, so it wasn’t a known thing. They didn’t think it was the clocks either.
The Decision to Move On
I toyed with the idea of PXing it or putting it in the auction, but the PX figure at LR was daft, about £8.5k. Difficult to know what to do next, really. It might have been there for months at this rate. And I was without a car.
After a month in the garage with no solution, I decided to cut my losses. The car, now 12 years old with nearly 100k miles, seemed like more trouble than it was worth. I collected it from the indy with plans to part exchange (PX) or sell it.
Driving home, the car went into limp mode on a roundabout but didn’t lose the display, suggesting the indy might have been close to finding the fault. However, I decided to sell it anyway.
I advertised it on the fullfatrr.com forums, and a chap from Cornwall came and bought it. He seemed very confident he could fix it.
I went off and bought a 2017 L405.
The Fix
A few months later, out of curiosity, I followed up with him. I really wanted to know if he had managed to find the problem.
I spoke to the new owner, who had fixed the problem. It turned out to be a faulty throttle body and intake pipework, along with a coolant leak from an aluminium pipe at the back. Once these issues were sorted, the car was running perfectly.
Lessons Learned
So what did I learn from this?
Electrical faults can often be traced back to seemingly unrelated components, as seen with the throttle body issue here.
For fellow L322 Range Rover owners experiencing similar issues, I hope this story provides some useful insights and reassures you that even the most perplexing problems can be resolved with perseverance. If the dashboard, radio or navigation display on your L322 Range Rover is going off when driving around a corner, have your mechanic read this article and ask him to check the throttle body!