Land Rover Repair: dashboard lights coming on, dashboard lights, electrical faults


Question
2003 Land Rover SE7    only 15K miles. yes 15K

ABS-TC-Rover Car light...These 3 lights come on my dashboard and sometimes won't go off unless I restart the car or even half to wait an hour or so. One day they prevented the power windows from working and the wiper delay wouldn't work (but regular wipers did), also the automatic gear stick wouldn't light up in the correct gear. Then a week goes by and everything is working fine again...now ABS-TC-Rover car lights came on again yesterday and the after restarting, it went off again.  What's happening to the car???  

Answer
Hi Hodge,

check to make sure no lightbulbs are burnt out on the exterior light panels.  Also examine the bulbholders to make sure no corrosion is causing an electrical short.

It's possible that you may have a security ECU problem or the ABS system is triggering electrical ground faults within your vehicle.  Also possible that a sensor is shorting and causing this problem...depends on how you park, angles, position of moon in relation to Mars...who knows!  

Seriously, LR's are known to misbehave with electrical faults.  For example, my left rear brake light burnt out and revealed itself by taking out all my dashlights.  Once I start to see dashlights not functioning...I immediately start looking at the lightbulbs in the rear, the sidemark lights or the interior lights.  Weird but true!

I once asked a LR mechanic why this happens and was told "its all in series" to let you know that something is wrong somewhere.  

Best of luck,

JohnMc