Land Rover Repair: 1999 Range Rover 4.0, diagnostic scanner, intermittent problem

Question
I have a 1999 Range Rover.  I get an EAS fault and the panel is lit up like a christmas tree. I cant adjust the height but occassionaly after being parked it adjust itself. The truck drives fine and i'm not getting any error messages - Can i clear this on my own? My thought is the previous owners kids got in the car and pressed all the buttons til it messed it up.  This is a "new" car for me. I previously had a Landrover Disc and was happy with that one too.  Anyway can you suggest anything?  I do like to try and trouble shoot and fix things on my own if possible.  I'm also having a small problem with the AC so if you know of anyone who can give me advice on that it would be awesome.  The ac works great except for the fact it takes like 30 mins for it to blow cold air but once it starts it's awesome.  thanks so much -sondee

Answer
Hi Sondee,

You have a soft fault in your EAS, unfortunately soft faults are EXTREMELY difficult to self diagnose.  A hard fault (complete system shutdown) is easier to figure out.

Soft faults are minor problems, typically a bad height sensor or an intermittent problem that isn't severe enough to make the ECU shut-down the system (which forces you to the shop for repairs).  The easiest way is to hook up to a LR specific diagnostic scanner and read the codes, based on those codes you have somewhere to start looking.  The codes need to be interpreted because one fault may cause a different part to log an error.  Height sensors with a bad-spot in their sweep are common for causing soft-faults.

It likely wasn't the kids, when the EAS is in good shape it's amazingly resilient, as it gets older parts will start needing to be replaced.

The A/C sounds low on charge, any automotive A/C specialist can work on it, nothing special about the LR system.