By jcw on Sunday, July 08, 2001 - 05:27 pm: Edit

The God of Mischief uses many guises. In Norse legend, he's Loki. In Peanuts, (s)he's Lucy. In Rover legend, he's Lucas. Over the past year, my '94 Disco rear windows have fallen under his spell. Once in awhile, they'd fail to operate, either with the front or rear switches. Usually turning the ignition on and off a time or two would get them working. Sometimes driving a few miles would do it. Finally they stopped working entirely, and it was time to fight back.

I got out the electrical manual, which Loki had tried to supress entirely, but merely managed to make outrageously expensive. Seems that the high amp current for the front windows is supplied by the window ECU, and the front window switches merely tell the wECU what is expected--they have thin signal wires. But the high amp current for the rear windows is shunted through the ECU and continues on through the switches--so they have heavy wires. It only needs to go through the ECU to allow the key to disable the rear windows--something I didn't want anyway. Apparently something in the wECU had gone flaky.

Two 30 amp lower satellite fuses, F1 and F2, supply the wECU directly, and the wECU is easily accessible just by springing the glovebox open (no screwdriver needed). I just snipped the lead to the rear window switches (I think it was pink/white...one wire becomes four at some later splice) and tapped it into one of the incoming 30 amp lines with a wire tap. 2 minute job...now the rears work all the time, key on or off. Of course, Loki had to get his hand in, and I blew one of the fuses while fiddling around. The LR manuals, of course, would have you disconnect the battery for any job...probably including changing a fuse! Anyway, maybe this'll help if anybody else has the rear window gremlins.

John