You may have seen some of my posts about the million warning lights I was getting, lowered suspension, and every other message you can think of. I took it to the local LR dealer and might as well have asked my cat (which is dead btw) because I would have had more sense and a more intelligent approach. All they did was read the codes and I can assure you their system is no better than IID and gives a printout which is almost identical. I found no logical approach such as checking for corrosion first, checking for bad connections, checking for CAN integrity and then looking at codes. Instead they showed me their printout..
I told them the sort of things that happened and stressed one occasion when I hit a pothole too fast and this set off the christmas tree. You would have though that this alone would have triggered a thought that perhaps there was a dicky connection - but no. Clueless and relying on a tool which is not fit for purpose.
So, all the warnings started and related to the BOSCH ABS system which has these sensors:

A DSC switch.
An HDC switch.
An HDC relay.
A stoplamp switch.
Four wheel speed sensors.
A yaw rate and lateral acceleration sensor.
A steering angle sensor.
Warning indicators; four on vehicles with a high line instrument cluster and five on vehicles with a low line
instrument cluster.
A hydraulic control unit (HCU) with attached ABS module.

Any one of these leads to other warnings but the root is the ABS system.
So, here's the issue I have. Why can't their car software issue a warning light or code which says simply 'yaw rate sensor input out of range' for example??
Why not, because LR is a slave to ODB and **** engineers and designers are not very good and don't think.
Why can't it say 'stoplamp' switch not working' for example?
The problem is that the top level design of the car software is crap. Simple.
So, I think I found the answer to my problem. I noticed after checking EACH of these sensors, that the steering wheel one had odd readings. I reseated the connector and bingo - so far it works perfectly. The clue, which LR ignored, was the sudden onset after a hard shock - which points to a connection problem.
The other problem that is caused b the lousy software design is that even if the DSC switch is duff or the yaw rate is duff or any of them are duff, they should not cascade to give 'gearbox fault', fuel low, suspension changing height, speedo and revs don't work etc etc. This is just lousy and stupid software design by LR.
They did tell me the new cars a much better because the CAN bus is much faster. A load of bull - the base software and ODB systems are the same and designed by the same people.
Apparently some people are thinking of buying a Defender which has 85 onboard ECUs. What could possibly go wrong?
So, moral, IID is as good as LR stuff and they both require thinking outside the box to get results. It took me months. The higher level software of Landrovers is a disgrace and once I sell this car I will never, ever have another LR

 

Glad you seem to have solved it, and completely understand your frustration. Just to clarify- that connector you reseated was for the steering angle sensor, correct? How long has it been good now? I’d just like to get an easy-to-find data point here for the benefit of the forum.

 

Each time I start the car now, I check with IID that the steering angle sensor show a valid reading when I turn the wheel. It has done for the last month nearly and since then (fingers crossed, no problem). I occasionally get an error for lost communication with the parking brake module but I just clear it. This only happens every 30 kms or so.
For the steering I simply jiggled the connector to be sure it was seated - nothing removed. I had previously changed the brake light switch but it was not necessary since the contacts were fine and changing it made no difference.
It *looks* like this could have been the source of the problem and logically it is - warning lights when I hit a bump and all related to the ABS systems. The BOSCH system is used on many cars but it then is a question of how the higher level software interprets the results. LR could have done things differently since they write the higher level software but didn't. I would love to talk to one of their software designers!
I still do not understand why their software can take action if one of the sensors is giving a bad reading but they can't give an error message telling you the sensor is faulty - and no, the confused ODB messages don't and are not eh answer. ODB is fundamentally not fit for purpose but it has become the elephant in the room and no-one dares say so.