Land Rover Repair: engine problem, land rover discovery, spider unit

Question
1998 land rover discovery -engine dies- after 5
to 10 minutes, engine will restart and sometimes
run for a mile or two (or less) before quitting again.
engine light is on.
Anything I can check before towing it 50 miles to
a dealer.
Thanks
Russ

Answer
Hello Russ,
UPDATE::::::::

a fellow Disco owner in the UK had this to say about your problem:

It sounds like a problem I had with my old 96 Disco.  It took ages to find and was the Alarm Immobiliser Spider Unit.   A track/connection had a dry solder joint and would get hot, expand the joint and then cut out. I dismantled the spider (a "sealed unit", bullox! no such thing...  ) and "modified" it to cope with the power. Mine would sometimes not start in the mornings, sometimes would start and run for anything from 2 minutes to 3 hours, then cut out, wouldn't restart for a few minutes or sometimes hours, then the same thing again.

It was hard to diagnose in my case because the voltage at the coil was fine, until you started cranking when the system tried to increase the current draw (to make the spark), then the dry joint caused a voltage drop which was making the ignition amplifier cut out. It was a total pig of thing to find but you could look at that first - unfortunately it isn't easy to get at.

RUSS....here's how to bypass the above problem:

One way of testing to see if it IS a power problem:  run a bypass wire direct from the battery positive to the positive terminal on the coil.  That way it will get power no matter what AND if that cures it (you'll have to take the wire off to stop the engine though...) you should probably look in the spider unit. If it works it would be a lot less grief that towing it to the dealer!

Give the workaround a try ... I wish you good luck.  Let me know how this turns out.  I am most interested and could pass this info on to other Disco owners.

My email address is    jmcinnis64@hotmail.com

Regards,
JohnMc

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Original reply follows:


it could be a temperature sensor or even the thermostat. Do you know if the temperature gauge is running higher than normal?  Maybe the thermostat is not opening and thus overheating.  Check your hoses to see if it is extremely hot.  Meanwhile, I will contact some other owners and see what they suggest.

JohnMc