Last July my 03 Disco had it's M&S lights start flashing and the tranny would go into limp mode. If I pulled over and restarted the car it was fine for another mile or so, luckily I was not far from home and parked it there. It never threw any kind of code, just the flashing lights and the limp mode.

Then I went traveling with my wife for 4 months in Australia. We got home for Christmas and in 3 weeks we went to Hawaii for 2 months. Thanks to Shell Oil for sending my wife to neat places that I got to tag along to!!!!

So over the weekend I charged the battery and reattached the negative connection which I disconnected last year. My connections to the battery are good and tight as they were when the issue happened last year. The car started right up and I've been driving it for 2 days, mostly near my home just in case it acts up but so far it is running great with no problems.

I suspect the XYZ switch got some water in it, last July was peak AC season and I understand that the drain line is right above the switch. Would a switch dry out if left for a long time? Does anyone know a good way to add an extension to the drain line and reroute it? As a precaution I'm leaving the AC off but at least the weather is nice.

Just driving it for an hour or so reminded me how much I like my Disco!

 

How did you like Hawaii?

Anyways, I'm by no means an expert, but I've seen a few things that can affect this. I had the blinking M+S switches just like you described. I cleaned off the terminals and put some dielectric grease and let it sit over the weekend, and never had an issue again.

My good friend had his D2 get the same symptoms and we did the same thing and it kept on doing it for about a week. We had to pull the XYZ switch and cleaned it up and it never had another issue again.

With that being said, I think we had similar symptoms for two different issues, I had low voltage, and he had water in the XYZ switch. So no, I don't think the XYZ will just dry out over time, however you could just have a different issue that resolved itself and lead you to this conclusion... just my 2 cents

 

Thanks for replying. Oahu was fine, we were out on the SW side near the Chevron refinery where my wife was working on a job. I ate fish just about every day, freshest tuna I've ever had!

Yes, last year when the problem started I checked my battery connections and they were nice and tight and corrosion free and the battery was only a few months old. I'm leaning towards a water based short on or near the switch on the transmission. So far so good so I will keep driving until something comes up.