AB just made a splash about it on Youtube. They make is sound as if it's a mission-critical tool for Disco ownership but this is literally the first I've heard of it.

https://www.roverparts.com/tools/shop-tools/XYZSWTOOL/

 

Honestly looks great. But $100 bucks. Having adjusted a few of these, I bet it would be helpful. But it's totally possible without the tool.

 

I remember the wall of LR "Special Tools" at the Dealership. However they usually only had one of each back in the day so if that tool was being used techs came up with methods on doing the job with other tools or methods. I myself have always done well installing XYZ switches, but nothing wrong with using a tool to make it easier/faster. 100.00 is a lot, but if you were a shop or did LR projects often it would pay for itself quickly IMHO like a Nanocom.

 

The few times I've installed an XYZ switch I've just eyeballed the alignment, after looking in the RAVE to see how the tool is designed and understanding what it is meant to accomplish (i.e. the flats of the selector shaft being perpendicular to the hole on the edge of the switch housing with the selector shaft in the N position).

Failing that, having an assistant inside the truck to confirm whether or not PRND321 display correctly in the instrument panel as the shifter is moved through its range works too.

After writing that, I watched the YouTube video. Sheesh.

AB says the guy is a "Gold Certified Land Rover technician:. Uh, okay, but I lost confidence in him when he repeatedly referred to "setting the timing" of the switch. Timing? No, it's just alignment.

And then, at the 3:05 mark in the video, he says using the tool can help avoid having "fault codes in the system". In my admittedly limited number of instances where an XYZ switch needed to be replace there were no fault codes. Either the BCM wasn't getting a signal that the trans was in Park so it wouldn't release the key from the ignition switch, or the truck wouldn't start because the BCM didn't see the trans was in Park or Neutral. No codes. While it's true the RAVE lists a P0705 code as "Gear position switch, incorrect outputs" as one of the 14 faults that can trigger the flashing M&S lights, in my experience a failed XYZ switch didn't trigger the flashing M&S.

 

100 is a huge amount of money for that.
I know a wife can cost a lot more (or less), but that one time (not at band camp) I had to setup XYZ...
Had the wife in the D2 handling the gears and I was under setting the switch, no special tools needed and got it done reasonably easily as soon as communication started working.

 

I googled LRT-44-011 and found the same thing on eBay for $35

 

I’ll pay a kid $5 to sit in the disco and tell me what letter it’s spitting out lol

 

I’ve been blessed to never had to deal with the XYZ, but I’m always for tools to make things easy. For example, on one of the motorcycles I decided some time back to pay the man for the hotrod Motion Pro tool to do headset bearings. The tool was quite pricey, but it made the job so ridiculously easy, I was almost bummed I didn’t get to use my cool new tool for more than 5 minutes on the job.

This seems in the same boat and honestly I’d probably pay for the tool, or do what another poster did and search for an alternative.