The topic has probably been discussed ad nauseam but here's my story for what it's worth:

Over the past few years, I had been getting Transferbox Neutral warnings flashing by, oftentimes too fast to read. Though the car's behavior was unaffected, whenever they became too frequent and annoying, a restart would see them sorted. The low range would also be unavailable unless the car had been restarted. This could happen any time of the year and may or may not have been coinciding with recent use of low range -which I think it likely did-
Monday morning I began to get transmission failsafe program warnings on and off. The IID gave the following codes:

("Noise on actuator signal has been ever present" and I haven't cleared any faults after the repair attempt so might do that later today...)

0x8D Transmission Interface Bus fault

TBOX-Transfer Case

0x5223 Noise on actuator signal -

0x5221 Sensor short circuit to battery -

TCM-Transmission

0x20 Output shaft speed sensor fault: General fault

The car would put up with several bongs in a row before actually going into failsafe with a harsh shift. Some times it did not really default to failsafe but rather continue to change gears though sport and manual remained unavailable. The low range switch would have no effect and even when it actually did work, I would become stuck to low range until it randomly cleared long enough to allow shifting into high.
Clearing most aforementioned faults was possible, with the exception of the 0x5221
I tried fuse 37 and, while it would actually set transfer to neural, no further calibration was allowed, as rhe failsafe would be triggered time and again.
Classically being August with all garages closed, I decided to take a peek inside the shifter motor and decide what I should be ordering for.
Instead of removing rhe whole assembly, I followed the least invasive method of removing the cover plate, to reveal the potentiometer. Everything looked fine until I pulled the plug. The 3 male contact leads seems covered in greyish residue which I carefully scraped off with a flat blade screwdriver.

Click image to enlarge

By way of update, cleared the codes and they haven't returned even after quite a few stops while running errands around town. Even the usual "noise on actuator signal " seems absent.

Seems I spoke too soon. Trans failsafe flashed a couple of times this morning. So I completely removed the potentiometer, cleaned both sides of the male pins down to shiny, bare metal and the female plug with contact cleaner. I then spun the inner ring a few dozen rounds in both directions and was able to do no less than a dozen shifts from high to low without any hiccups whatsoever. Another drive around town for the usual errands and no codes stored.
If it gives me any serious trouble again, I'll open it up and decide from there.

It could be cracked solder joints on the potentiometer.

I had the same issues as you. I even replaced the output shaft speed sensor.

Have a look at GHur's post here: https://www.rangerovers.net/threads/transf...st-2318674

I can't find my post but mine had cracked solder joints, too. I resoldered then (a couple of years ago) and have had no issues since. Ron B. VK2OTC
2003 L322 V8 Auto
2007 Yamaha XJR1300
Previous: 1983, 1986 RRC; 1995, 1996 P38A; 1995 Disco1; 1984 V8 County 110; Series IIA

Last edited by p38arover on 15th Aug 2025 2:30pm. Edited 1 time in total

Thanks!

Yes, it could very well be. We shall see how ot goes. 200 km today with several short stops and no dings or bongs. If it comes back, the pot comes apart