Have you tried what RicketyTick suggested? To me this sounds like a great place to start. For one, it will only cost you a little bit of time to clean up the cable connections which is a good idea anyway. Also, he's speaking from experience with the same problem you are having.

 

This is probably your transmission going into limp home mode. It is going to lock into 2nd gear and ignore the shifter from 1 to D altogether.

 

This morning the car started and shifted between all gears PRND321 indicators illuminated normally drove few meters in the garage back and forth) until the M&S lights started flashing, it was stuck on 'D' in the dashboard whenever shifting to 3,2,and 1, but 'R' and 'P' showed normally. I left the car running for few minutes, the engine/rpm rough up a bit, down a bit, up again a bit, and then normal revs. Last night it did the same thing roughing up, and down while idling, and then stalled and engine switched off. I have already ordered the XYZ Switch, delivery next week, I will post an update.

My mechanic can read the codes using his testbook, but will need to tow the car there, I don't feel comfortable driving it for 35km on limp mode to get there, will tow it when I get the switch, and hopefully all gets sorted.

I wrote to a South African mechanic who is know to do magic to the LRs he gets, and suggested that I take a look at a grey cable coming out of the Engine ECU, from that cable comes out a white and yellow cable, and apparently at times they untangle, and tried to locate the Engine ECU (Probably he meant ECM), but I couldn't. According to him if the yellow and white cables untangle, they can cause the M & S flashing. Any idea?

 

C'est la vie

 

It's been a while, latest update on M&S lights flashing: I connected the car to a Hawkeye diagnostics as recommended and got a P1884 (35) CAN message (Engine speed Invalid intermittent).

And from the Engine Data from the HawkEye, I got Fault 108 continuous power supply interruption minimum value.

When I got this Fault 108, I thought of checking Live Data from the HawkEye and got (what I think is) a not so good voltage from the battery, when car started it read 13.7v, few minutes later got a lower 13.6v, until almost an hour later the diagnostics device was reading a mere 13.3v-13.4v without any load, when I stressed the battery with all the load I have seen hit a voltage of 13.1v.

What is a critical voltage for the gear box that can trigger the M&S lights.

Can the above help in a diagnosis?

 

Yes, I think so. It tells us the problem is not the XYZ switch.

This problem is now well outside my expertise, such as that is. Happily for most of us the ZF transmissions are apparently nearly bulletproof, at least given the traffic in the forum.

I nonetheless did a (very) quick search of RAVE using the term "engine speed" but came up with nothing relevant. That said it seems to me that the next question should be how does the EAT box get its engine speed signal. That I do not know, nor could I find the answer readily (i.e. quickly) in RAVE.

Could it be a pin or receptacle in a connector that needs to be cleaned? Perhaps. I had an SRS fault recently that turned out to be a mysterious short inside the SRS connector.

It can be very frustrating that RAVE does not include troubleshooting content. It describes operation of all the components and systems but leaves us to deduce the causes of the problems. Doing so is not difficult in many cases but in this case there appears to be a missing link.

 

I would have a look at the cam and crank signals. Make sure they're consistent especially when the engine runs rough and the code sets. Maybe one of them is bad or shorting out intermittently?

 

Latest update on my dilemma, M&S lights have finally stopped flashing.


To cut a long story short, the issue was with one of the 18mm spacers on my CPS, got to that conclusion after eliminating the battery/earthing, alternator, and XYZ switch options, I have started looking outside that triangle, until I was almost certain it was CPS spacers related.


I have to admit that the following two hints have helped me immensely with my conclusion:

• An older posting by Drowssap (Thank you) that I read on a similar issue that made me doubt that my spacer(s) were not OK, https://landroverforums.com/forum/discovery-ii-18/limp-mode-after-crank-position-sensor-replaced-67801/
  
• Page 314 of the Land Rover D II workshop manual, and the info that described a ‘Sudden Stall” that I experienced twice.

Took CPS and spacers out, and BINGO, there they were, one spacer was original and one was not (why not? another very long story), replaced with original, put things back, and I have not seen them for 5 days.
Thank you all for the efforts,

 

What a conundrum, Congratulations on the fix!

 

Glad you found it