Hi all, it's been awhile since I've posted because my '08 LR3 V8 has been generally quite reliable other than usual maintenance items. I've been troubleshooting a parasitic battery drain this week that will run the battery down over the course of a week or so. Day to day it's fine.

What i've done so far:
1. Had battery charged back up at the battery vendor; it took full charge and passed load test.
2. Tightened up the battery clamps. I had an issue getting the positive cable tight, which I initially thought might be the whole issue. I filed the clamp gap to be a bit wider and now I have a reliably tight connection there.
3. Swapped the battery (Duracell 94R platinum AGM) with my E46 BMW, which has the same battery. No changes.
4. Checked floorboards for water; none observed. Did a cursory check on the troughs by the doors. In general I stay on top of the usual suspects - sunroof drains, a-pillars, cowl. I have fabricated an extra shield under the cowl as many others have also done.

With all of that as a baseline, I got the meter set up to pull fuses. Hood switch is bypassed, passenger door locked while open, vehicle locked via remote, then allowed to sit for 30 minutes to let modules sleep. Static drain is about 550mA measured at the battery negative cable in series.

Initial fuse pulling at the battery found most of that load would go away when pulling FL17 and FL18, and I gather that these primarily feed the interior fuse box. I did get a 100mA drop pulling F26 (air suspension) as well, but suspect I might have just caught that on a temporary wake up to self-level.

Moving inside, I pulled each fuse one at a time and found the following were notable:
F20 Sunroof (20-30mA drop)
F39 Instrument Pack (initially drop from 550 to 450mA, then to 250mA after a few seconds, then to 160mA, and then ultimately to 20mA)
F51 HVAC ECU (100mA drop)
F53 Radio (60mA drop)

So pulling F39, after a minute or two, gets me to an acceptable static load. I gather from searching that the instrument pack can fail in a number of interesting ways (flashing lights, no starts, etc) but I didn't see anything about a failure that was only indicated by extra power draw. I also read that the instrument cluster is the intersection of the high and medium speed can bus, so this might just be a symptom of a separate module that won't sleep for some reason. I have no other symptoms from the cluster; truck runs and drives normally.

I also found a thread about a software issue with the instrument pack, and my VIN range is affected, but since it materialized recently I sort of doubt a software issue. https://www.landyzone.co.uk/land-rov...-drain.218398/

So, what next? I'm thinking:

1) Reset all codes with GAP tool. I often have several "missing a message" faults from various modules. I clear them, they come back, doesn't usually seem to impact anything.
2) Pull F53, F51, F20 and see if any of those ultimately let the cluster go to sleep.
3) Pull the cluster and check for any obvious loose connections or corrosion.
4) Another pass for water intrusion?

Has anyone ever had a similar problem and if so how was it resolved? Any other troubleshooting ideas I might have missed?

TIA... -Dan

 

L322, but very similar sounding issue. Turned out to be the cluster: https://www.rangerovers.net/threads/...use-46.348179/

I tried ideas 1-3 above. No change when pulling any other fuse, pull the cluster fuse and it goes right to sleep. Cluster itself looks clean, nothing visually amiss on the connector or back side of the circuit board.

 

Try a hard reset, then retest.

 

Good call Abran. Unfortunately I just tried that and it didn't change anything.

Found a better description of the TSB: https://charm.li/Land%20Rover/2009/R...attery%20Draw/

I'm going to email GAP Diagnostics and see if they are able to apply this one.

 

Update: GAP advised that the IPC flash function was part of the tool (which of course it is). I had read the TSB as a more targeted procedure... not sure if they digested my question fully but I'm sure they get an impressive amount of email traffic.

Anyway, I decided to try flashing the cluster. Updated to latest firmware on the GAP tool, hooked up a power supply, and it went as the documents said it would. The ECU Infos screen shows several values different than before.

The first re-check after 30 minutes was disconcerting... 2.5-3 Amps load. Maybe I missed something and didn't get it fully to sleep? Since then I've done two further checks, waiting a bit longer and found the truck is FULLY ASLEEP. 12-20mA static load.

Success? Maybe. I'm going to keep an eye on it. Don't really have enough data to understand why and if this was the fix. Could be a pure software bug (mileage triggered? otherwise why would it only show up now). Could also be that the cluster hardware is starting to age and fail (I'm at 180k miles), and this reset will be a temporary stay before symptoms re-appear.