Land Rover Repair: Spider Unit Location and picture, spider unit, inaccessible locations

Question
John,
Using your detailed process of removing the Spider Unit from my 1997 Discovery, I opened the whole of the center console and found NO Spider unit. I have looked for an hour but I just can not see the thing. Not knowing the shape and size of it I may be looking past it totally. Could you kindly provide some picture and/or size etc.
The only thing I see behind after taking the console out is the fan unit. On the left (towards driver side) I see a metal bracket on the fan unit but no Spider. Since I do not know exactly how big this Spider unit is and what it looks like, I may be looking past it.
P>S> your direction of removing the center console were excellent. Thanks!
Laji

Answer
Hi Laji,

here's an excerpt from a fellow owner who replaced his spider unit.  Within these steps is a good description of the black box Spider:  (thanks goes to DiscoDave)

<< Removing the spider unit

This is fun. Really fun in only the way that a dashboard with lots of fiddly little screws and bits that you can drop in inaccessible locations can be... allow 2-3 hours at least. You don't need many tools, in fact I think only a couple of Philips screwdrivers, a soldering iron/solder, and something to make some clock keys out of, plus the radio removal keys for your particular type of radio.

I suggest you get hold of a workshop manual for this as it makes life easier if you know what order to take things out in and where all the screws are hidden but a brief rundown is below -- sorry if I have forgotten anything but it's a while since I took one out.

- Disconnect the vehicle battery
- Remove the radio (you will need radio keys for this) and its cage
- Remove the ashtray & the blank switch panel on the opposite side (they just pull out)
- Remove the clock on one side and coin tray on the other (easiest way is to get 2 flat bits of metal about credit card thickness, slide in above and below the clock to release the retaining tabs and it just slides out)
- Remove the twin pop out cupholders (about six screws)
- Pull off the 3 rotary heating/ventilation controls
- Unscrew and remove the plastic surround to these
- Unscrew the heater controls so you can move the unit around

You will now be pretty much at the stage of being able to take the black centre console panel out ... so take the screws out and wriggle it out. It tends to catch on things but will pop out with a bit of a tug. The face vents etc come out with the console.

Behind all this you will find a small black box screwed to a metal face which slopes towards you at about 45 degrees. It has two screws holding it in and a 10 pin multiplug coming out the RH side which is covered up by a metal security plate so you can't easily disconnect it. Take the unit out. This is a "sealed for life unit" which it is not possible to repair. Ignore that sentence.

You will see that on the end of the box where the connector is, the plate is a press-in fit. Get a small flatblade screwdriver and lever out the end plate, working your way round until it pops out. The whole circuit board will slide out.

Look on the back of the circuit board (the solder side). Chances are the fault will be immediately obvious, if it is a little blackened and burned, but if not, examine all the solder joints carefully, if the unit has failed in the normal way there will be a "dry joint" (where the solder joint has cracked up making a bad connection) on one of the larger pins on the board. Basically all you need to do is to get a decent fairly high powered soldering iron with a small point on it (I use a 40 watt) and re-solder the broken connections. Depending on how much you enjoyed taking the unit out, you might also want to do all the other relay and connector pins while you are in there - it makes sense.

As an option of course you can replace the unit, I think it costs about £40 or so and the part number is on the unit, usually AMR4889.

Put the box back together once it has cooled off a bit, and connect it up. At this point it makes sense to test the system before you put everything back in ... so reconnect the battery and fire it up - hopefully everything will now work! >>

Laji,

it should be just behind the centre of the fascia.  C2095 / Z271

There should be a wire connector exiting to the right of the box.

I hope this helps.

I have a photo...send me an email and I'll post my reply with the photo.

Regards,

JohnMc