Hi guys,

Im a new member to the site am in need of some help, please?!? Yesterday my battery ran flat on my disco 3 i left the door open and the light steadily drained the battery.. I then charged the battery up while still connected to the car with a battery charger.

Once charged as i thought i started the car and it ran for seconds and then died. I called he RAC out after a few attempts. The conclusion from the rac man was that i had fried the ecu. The car had to be recovered to the dealer. I called them today and they say i need a new ecu!!!

So getting to the point has anyone had this problem? And does anyone know what the cost of an ecu for a 55 reg discovery 3 is?? Any help would be much appreciated.


Tom

Discovery 3 SE
2005
65,000

 

This is not a Disco but an LR3.
I'll move this to the LR3 section.
You have a big expense coming up.
Let us know what the estimate is.

 

Check the voltage on your charger, maybe it's too high. That might tell you why the ECU went out.

Willie

 

Man I'm sorry to hear that , I just had battery problems too in my DII. I used to work in electronics that involved multiple rechargeable battery systems, This is a terrible way to learn this but anyone charging a battery it's often best to set you charger on 2AMPs, 12 or 6 Volts are you only choice on VOLTAGE and SLOW charge the battery. That really sucks I'm sorry to hear that about your ECU.

 

guys thanks for your help i will get back to you when i know more about the costs. Great advice with the battery charger but think i may leave well alone in future.

 

I have never left a battery instalkled in any car while charging with any battery charger.

No wonder the ECU fried, it saw the jacked up voltage that is the normal output of a battery charger.

I believe it is ALWAYS best practice to disconnect the battery from the vehicle PRIOR TO CONNECTING AND ENERGIZING THE BATTERY CHARGER.

I ALWAYS HEARD EDUCATION WAS EXPENSIVE, chalk that up to Battery Charging 101..............

 

hi danny

I actually joined this site hoping for some useful help that would of course give me a little more info on prices of ecu's just in case anyone had had the miss fortune of what i have done. Judging by your less than helpful post i can see that i have come to the wrong place.

Thankyou to the other members who have actually helped in some way.

 

I don't want this small site to get the rap of a certain German car site I belong to were everyone is too cool to answer your question but come on Tom, we know you are frustrated but you're LOOKING FOR A LR3 ECU you're are a bit screwed. You don't have a 11+year Old Rover like a fair amount of us. If you needed for an example the entire CDL shift linkage out of a DI to modify and install into a DII can I call the British Rover genius in my town and ask if he has a extra set of the entire linkage YES,but He's not going to have a shelf with 10 extra LR3 ECUs(which doesn't even address the other possible problems you possibly have) good luck but You Really Do need to bring your LR3 to the dealer at this point. You wouldn't let a web forum diagnose weather or not you personally needed brain surgery but thats what your LR3 needs now some Brain surgery on the ECU . Good luck JW.

 

Tom,

My posting was not intended to be distateful or offensive to you or anyone else for that matter. Don't judge the site by one experience.

If my reply was that offensive to you, I feel very bad for you. I did not try to be mean to you but if you did not understand that leaving a battery connected while hooking up a battery charger was not the technically correct thing to do, you might restrict yourself to only doing those things in which you are technically competent.

You can do a whole lot worse than fry an ECU. I don't know what a new one cost but even if you do manage to find a used one somewhere it will most likely be salvaged from a recent totalled vehicle and will still cost a good bit.

Good Luck

 

One thing you might consider is to take the "fried" ECU apart for an internal "look-see" to determine the extent of the damages you induced by failing to electrically isolate the battery from the vehicle prior to providing the additional excitation from the introduction of the energized battery charger.

Operator error is a heck of a cause for significant failure in that it was completely avoidable. But at least maybe some others learned from your costly moment of poor decision making.

We could start a "Lessons Learned Sticky" things not to do. I am sure several of us could contribute words of wisdom to such.