D2 flashes warning lights, stutters and continues

MLu

New member
May 19, 2017
3
0
Helsinki, Finland
Sorry about the less-than-entirely descriptive title. My google-fu is failing me, so I turn to you.

Vehicle: -99 Discovery 2, TD5, automatic. Green.

Problem: Land Rover.

Details: We were on a 1000km round trip this weekend, and at one point the disco gave me a bit of a scare. Smooth road, cruising along at maybe 90km/h. After about 400 km, without any kind of warning, all the lights on the dash light up, the steering wheel feels a bit weird (as if the power steering suddenly disappeared) and the whole car sort of stutters or jumps just a bit. I have about enough time to blink before the lights go back out and everything is back to normal. First reaction was to try the accelerator, but it was already back to running normally. After a few moments of confusion and internal cursing it does the same thing again for just a second. After that the rest of the trip went without a hitch. No sign of any problems.

First thought was some major electrical glitch or something that jumped out of contact for a second. Second thought was that the engine actually stopped running, as if I had turned off the ignition and immediately turned it on again.

It's had a fair share of various random little problems and borderline catastrophic failures, but this is the first time I'm actually worried it might suddenly just stop running, and we have another longer trip coming up in a few weeks time.

Any ideas, or have a missed some obvious thread that I should be reading?
 

DiscoTech

Well-known member
Nov 18, 2004
352
0
43
Side of the road....
^^^^ What he said! Check the battery terminals, and make sure they are getting a solid connection. I recently had issues with my D2; similar to yours, but without the warning lights. After digging into everything, I cut the battery terminals off and put new terminals on...voila, those problems stopped.

Mike
 

MLu

New member
May 19, 2017
3
0
Helsinki, Finland
I need to go have the codes read, I don't have any diagnostics tools, unfortunately. I've changed the battery a couple of years ago to one where the terminals are on the "wrong" side of the battery, so I've had to stretch the cables an inch or two to reach them, but that was the first thing I checked. They are just as they were before. Not ideal, but they are on there.

The negative terminal is the one that's stretched a bit, and if the negative is disconnected then the engine will still keep running, you won't notice it until you try to start it again. That's happened before...

I guess a trip to the mechanic's place is up next.
 

rovercanus

Well-known member
Apr 24, 2004
9,643
244
Sounds to me like an ignition switch problem. Your steering probably felt funny because your engine did cut off. Going to position 2 in the switch will turn on your warning lights.
Do you have a lot of stuff on your key ring?