In article om,
cynic wrote:
My '03 Discovery has begun a sporadic fault. Symptom being the engine
management fault light comes on and the accelerator pedal has no effect
although the engine continues to run at tick over. This has happened
twice now at about two weeks apart. First time just before Christmas on
a busy dual carriageway during peak period. I managed to coast up onto
the grass right out of the way of the traffic fortunately or some loon
would no doubt have come to a sudden stop in my rear end. I called the
RAC out and on arrival the fault had disappeared. the engine started
and ran ok so we travelled to a nearby car park where the RAC guy
plugged his "universal" comms laptop into the link but the Land Rover
system would not talk to his set.
He theorised that the fault was transient but would be in the engine
management memory and a Land Rover agency could interrogate it.
Having tried and failed to make an appointment at a reasonable time
before Christmas the problem recurred on boxing day but I found simply
turning off then on again was sufficient to reset the unit again. I am
now due to take the vehicle into an agency next week but they were not
confident the memory would still hold the fault.
Have we anyone in our numbers who have knowledge of the engine
management system on a Discovery 2.5 Diesel and is it feasible to get
hold of the commes interrogation software to run on my own laptop?

It must have some form of TPS (throttle position sensor) even although a
diesel. It might be a pot or a rotary encoder. My first checks would be to
make sure the connections between it and the ECU are clean and secure. And
to look at its output with a scope.

The trouble with third party software and hardware to read *any* codes is
the makers deliberately change these at regular intervals simply to make
things difficult for independents - unless it is one of the OBC codes
which the US have insisted are universal. Or at least they have to be in
the US. And of course they don't really have diesel cars there yet.

--
*Why don't sheep shrink when it rains?

Dave Plowman London SW
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