P38A Spurious Failure Warnings

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cornishboater said:
Just to say that I sent my BECM to Rick, my old one was knackered but I have been sent a rebuilt one and all is good with the world. I cannot say thank you enough to him for sorting it out for me. One very top class chap doing us a great service, will be the only place I will ever recommend (well, and Marty :) )
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Fingers crossed for Dan then.
 
Oh Dear.
Despite a return trip to RickThePick (thanks Rick!) and back and some replaced diodes & resistors the vehicle still exhibits the same fault(s).
Suggestion is to replace the main fusebox........... which is the first thing I did.
So this leaves me no further forward and with the words "Main Fusebox" ringing in my ears I have contacted the nice folks at Furness Car Company who advise that they will accept a return of their 2nd-hand unit under its 90-day warranty and IF it is faulty they will refund my money.
This leads me to wonder what I can do next if they say "No it isn't faulty"??????

I still have the original that came off the car in the first place but I'll be blowed if I can prise it apart (there are little ratchet tags all the way round locking it together) to see if it is burnt-out inside or a land-pattern gone or, or, Or.
Apart from the relays, I thought it was all passive components though???
Rapidly approaching the end of my patience with it to be honest.
 
Hi wazza, I missed the post about the beer, there is a nice little place around the corner from moi and would be great to meet up again. Apart from what seems to be a bad contact on fuse 17 all appears to be going well so far thanks to Rick-the-Pick, there are even some bits working properly that were not! Now, if only I could find out why the door and tailgate inhibit wont work virtually everything is electrically working, just need to send my HVAC head unit off to Marty to sort out, Pockets are empty this month now though ;)
 
Fuse box tabs. Try prising one free at a time I found it helpful putting a thin piece of plastic between them ie a plastic drinks bottle cut up to keep the tabs from snapping back together. Then kept going around prising the plastic cover up eventually it does give hth
 
Just decided to call a halt to ongoing investigations.
It has cost £610 so far with no positive result.
A similar vehicle of this age without such a fault can be bought for only £300 more, so what's the bloody point?
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
 
Hands up - who's been there then - I know I certainly was getting towards that sentiment with my low brake fluid warning light fiasco.
Mrs Fergie is elsewhere in the house so I can confess to you chaps, that it was the wrong end of nearly £700. I try not to think about it.
If I may suggest, perhaps there is a friendly member near you with an identical vehicle that you can put side by side and systematically try parts out from the donor one at a time - so alternator, fuse box, switchgear etc.
Have you checked all of the under bonnet earths and the earth near the BeCM. There is an excellent site on the interweb that has all this information as to where the earth points are.
So many electrical problems are down to poor earths and our '38s aren't young anymore.
 
Fergie46 said:
Hands up - who's been there then - I know I certainly was getting towards that sentiment with my low brake fluid warning light fiasco.
Mrs Fergie is elsewhere in the house so I can confess to you chaps, that it was the wrong end of nearly £700. I try not to think about it.
If I may suggest, perhaps there is a friendly member near you with an identical vehicle that you can put side by side and systematically try parts out from the donor one at a time - so alternator, fuse box, switchgear etc.
Have you checked all of the under bonnet earths and the earth near the BeCM. There is an excellent site on the interweb that has all this information as to where the earth points are.
So many electrical problems are down to poor earths and our '38s aren't young anymore.
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Yep. Close to torching it at one stage.
 
OK, so I collected it from the Auto Sparky and its exactly the same as it was when I sent it in.
I ran it all the way home and it did occasionally throw up this "system reset" type of error. But the longer I drove, the fewer and farther apart these resets became.
Sparky says power FROM fuse-box is solid & good with no intermittent breaks to cause a reset.
Stumped at this juncture. Will have the "new" fusebox out again and send it off for testing is all I can think of.
 
I'm still convinced this is a bad earth/connection issue. Pigs to find unfortunately unless you get lucky and see a wire hanging off!! Pity I'm not closer, if I was, I'd be happy to have a day with you going over it to see if we could find it.
I don't believe it's any faulty modules or anything.
just a thought, You said your mpg is terrible? I'm wondering if something on the injector loom is pulling a voltage down and causing the fault?? (Just thinking out loud here) I know many have had issues and it's turned out to be something to do with bad splicing when fitting the LPG system. How big a job would it be to remove the electrical side of the LPG? Might be worth a shot, would only cost your time.
Also at 7mpg, it must be running like a bag of spanners with that much fuel going in, If you can find someone with nanocom close by who can have a read, it might show something up. I'm also thinking cam and crank sensor wiring here, again both have been known to get damaged and short out causing weird things to happen.
 
Also, temp sender wiring could give crap mpg as the engine will think it's massively sub zero. Not sure if it's a different sender for the gauge and ECU but trouble with the wiring could also be giving issues to the instrument cluster. Anything's possible at this stage!!
 
Have you looked at the ignition switch itself. The electonics screwed to the back of the barrel could be arching inside.
As a trial, get a jump lead & attached one end to the earth on the becm, & the other end onto the battery negative/earth.
 
Rick-the-Pick said:
Have you looked at the ignition switch itself. The electonics screwed to the back of the barrel could be arching inside.
As a trial, get a jump lead & attached one end to the earth on the becm, & the other end onto the battery negative/earth.
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Hi Rick,
It is an avenue for exploration for sure. The weird thing it that it will kick up the "fault" regular as you please on start up, and then and then it goes away for a while especially if you are trundling along at a decent speed, then just when you think "Hey.....its gone!" off it goes again.
Q. if it is a momentary open circuit that simulates ignition switch off then immediately back on again, is this sufficient to cause a "reset/Startup-sequence" on the BeCM but without killing the engine that is running?
 
Yes. It can cause the binnacle to flicker, & the power triggering on & off in the becm. This happens so fast that the engine know's no different.
A bad earth can cause the same symptoms as these vehicles are earth switching. Everything is live & switched by the earth. This is opposite to the generic vehicles.
Have you tried the jump lead from the becm earth to the battery. This will cut out any bad earths festering.
 
ok, make an earth lead yourself from the battery to the chassis somewhere, see how that gets on. If it works you can leave it in place or investigate other earth leads! Any leads you find, a quick wire brush and copper ease tend to help.
 
OK, I sort of gave up. After the £610 expenditure and the persistence of the fault I decided to call a halt to spending more on it as the fault was persistent despite everything.

I fitted a new set of plugs (because they were overdue for a change - so overdue I needed an Impact driver to get them out) and I decided to just live with the "resetting" as long as it did not cause the engine to die.

While changing the plugs I removed the earth from the Alternator (which was changed some while ago) scrubbed all the contact patches with a wire brush and smeared everything with copper-ease before re-tightening back up.

I also messed about with the drivers key-lock because the drivers door was out of synch with the "fob-opening". The fob would lock/unlock all doors except the drivers door itself, but using the physical key locked/unlocked all doors.

Now, during all my messing about I managed to fire a "mislock" alarm after which the driver doorlock came back into synch with keyfob opening/closing requests and all locking with the fob is now correct.
Spooky but true....... Since this re-synch between the fob and key locking modes the "fault" that has been plaguing me for so long has ceased.
No more Beeps from the console, no "low-fuel" or "Over-Temp" lights, no sudden stop/restart of A/C if its running.
Oh, and MPG is currently up at 11.6MPG and climbing.
Now, I am not claiming a "FIX" has been performed, but I wondered if anyone had an insight into why the fault could possibly disappear in this way.
I'm still going with dodgy earths as the most likely culprit.
A big thank you to everyone who has assisted with advice & guidance.
 
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