Happy Sunday to all of you good Rover owners! Sooo, my '04 D2 sat in my garage for 8 years having never been started/maintained the entire time. Back in January, I finally decided to put it back on the road. I took it to a local mechanic who works on Rovers exclusively and he pretty much got all of the pertinent issues fixed to get me up and running. The rest, I'm handling as we go along. My Climate Control wasn't working even though it was fine when I parked it. I purchased a new one and during installation my wife was talking to me and I got distracted and touched a couple of wires together. It caused a little spark and I continued the install. When I finished, the AC worked fine. Unfortunately, now my radio won't turn on and my door locks don't work at all. Neither the main switch on the dash nor the keyfob will lock/unlock any doors. I've checked the fuses for both and they're fine. I read that there's a fuse on the back of the radio that might have blown so that's my next step. But, I'm stumped on the door lock issue. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

How did you touch wires together? Which ones? I think you’re correct in checking fuses, but I think it depends more on what wires were touched that will determine what the issue is.

Hope life in the people’s republic is good- Livermore is where we had our last house, but just couldn’t stand the politics any longer.

 

Hey longtallsally, thanks for responding. Livermore was the first place we lived when moving to Cali back in 2010. Loved it, but the housing prices over there now are RIDICULOUS! Anyway, I'm ashamed to say that I don't exactly know which wires I touched together. I was in the process of stripping/splicing when my wife started asking me something and I got distracted. I looked away for a moment while holding wires and inadvertently let them go. They sprung back and touched and I immediately heard the spark. At this point, I'm not even concerned about the radio...I wanted to replace it anyway. But, I have some other issues which seem to have arrived just now as well and I'm not a big believer in coinky-dink, lol.
First off, I can't get the shifter out of park. After some research here, I assumed faulty brake light switch even though I never lost brake light functionality. I figured wth, it's a cheap repair so it couldn't hurt to install a new one. Alas, it didn't fix my issue.
Secondly, I've had some intermittent issues with starting the truck but they presented b4 the touched wires incident. I'll turn the key and only get a whiny/whirring sound. No attempt to turn over, no dimming of lights/instruments. If I turn it to ACC, wait 5-10 seconds and try to start sometimes that works. Other times it just won't start. Then the next day it starts as if nothing happened.
And lastly, there's the issue with my locks (keyfob and main dash switch) not working to lock or unlock any door. I swear, if I didn't love the look and feel of this model sooo much I'd drive it to the LR dealer, pull it into the lot and walk away, lol. Any help that you or the community can offer would be greatly appreciated.

 

Your starter is failing. The whirring sound is the pinion gear spinning in the housing but the bendix is not extending it to mesh with the flywheel and crank the engine over.

As for the locks, if they stopped working just after the sparky incident then it's most likely a fuse. You mentioned checking fuses but not where. If you weren't aware, there are two fuse boxes, one near the coolant expansion bottle in the engine bay and the other is behind knee bolster under the steering wheel. Fuse 13 in the engine bay is labeled as part of central locking, and Fuse 1 and 20 in the passenger compartment. Fuse 20 is also shared with the radio. If that doesn't fix it you may want to download a copy of the ETM and Electrical Library, and from there you should be able to figure out what the problem is.

 

Hey ahab, thx for responding. I checked the fuses in both locations but neglected to specify that in my initial post. Any guesses on what could be causing the issue of not being able to shift out of park?

 

Check that your brake lights are coming on. If they aren't then you could have a bad brake switch at the pedal which is also used to allow you get out of park.

 

Hey Andino, good to see ya still kickin' around in here! After a lil research the brake light switch was my determination as well. And even though I never actually lost my brake lights, I figured it couldn't hurt to throw in a new one considering it was a fairly cheap and simple repair. Unfortunately, that didn't solve the problem. Still stuck in park and the only to drive it is by popping up the base of the gear shift and disengaging the little pin that releases the shifter. To be honest, I wouldn't even consider that a priority over my locking issue if I was the only one driving it. But, it's currently my wife's daily driver so she won't be sticking her hand under there to disengage anything, lol. Any other thoughts/suggestions you've got, I'd sure appreciate them though.

 

Hi - LIke your wife, I do not want to fool with a scewdriver and a pin every time I want to drive. My husband has set this fix up because he wants to move the LR around when he re-arranges his classic car pack (40s-55s - he hates working on anything that has a computer or too many wires) I have a Freelander 2005 and it is locked in Park. I replaced (with great contortions) the brake switch. The middle of the back "high mounted stop light" works now but the 2 regular stop lights don't. I checked all the fuses and tomorrow am going to buy new brake lightbulbs. Maybe all of the brake bulbs have to work????? Sounds stupid to me but...

I was wondering if you found the answer to your stuck in park problem. Anything may help.

Thank you