Boat.Buoy
Member Since: 10 Jan 2014
Location: Bournemouth
Posts: 70
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Hi all,
This is a little long winded..just warning you!
Just thought I'd say hi, and thanks really! I've been lurking in the background for some time gaining advice here and there. You chaps do a fantastic job explaining faults and remedies and for that I'm truly thankful. As the title says, I'm fairly new to the L322, in saying that I have owned my 2002 4.4 V8 (BMW) L322 for around 4 years! ...I will explain in due course! Prior to this RR, I've owned a Defender since I was 18 and I could never bare to part with it!
So, the L322, I was originally in the market for one of the last, highest spec, cleanest P38's I could find. During this search I came across this L322, with a blown engine! Now I like a challenge, my Defender has seen all manner of conversion to get it to where it is now so I wasn't scared of a blown engine. After working out the costs I found it financially to viable look at replacing the engine, so set about trying to source a brand new, replacement V8. This proved harder than I first thought, it turns out there were a number of engines that had been purchased as spares for competition vehicles, being sold off...as it happens, in reality there was only a handful and all had been sold by the time I came along, despite many companies and websites offering engines for as little as £3k! So I inquired with Landrover, was quoted around £14k!? Clearly blowing any kind of budget, even a landrover "budget"! Anyway, days turned into night...a few times, until I finally secured a suitable deal, at around £5800 + vat! for a brand new, LR supplied complete engine.
A friend of my father is a very experienced BMW technician, who has served his time with many other premium brands, including Landrover. So who better to fit the engine and get me up and running. Everything went extremely smoothly, engine was fitted, he also overhauled every mechanical component on the vehicle, and changed every fluid.
I had been working away all this time, and bought the vehicle from a distance with my father going to inspect.
I was due to come back to the uk shortly after the work was completed, so my father drove the vehicle around for a few days to make sure everything was fine. He even collected me from the coach station in it. During my short drive home the dreaded "air suspension inactive" notification flashed up on the drivers display.
I took the vehicle to my friend/garage that has successfully worked on my defender on the odd occasion I didn't want to do it! Anyway, they plugged it in, cleared the faults and everything worked perfectly for a day or so, until the front end lowered down to its bump stops..and that's where it stayed!
Took it back to the garage to get the problem diagnosed/work out the plan of action to get it fixed. When they plugged it in, they couldn't communicate with the vehicle, the ECU would not respond., although it had done so perfectly only a couple of days ago. So the long and short of it, I needed a new body control module. Didn't fancy paying main-stealer prices, so sourced on fm eBay, for the bargain price of £60. Installed, we could now communicate with the vehicle. When they looked into the fault it was apparent the front air suspension units were leaking, causing the loss in pressure and drop to the bump stops. So they replaced both units with genuine parts. As it would happen, whilst investigating this fault my compressor decided it was also time for a replacement, so another genuine part was sourced.
So now were thinking/hoping/praying everything should be ok! Nope! Front will not do anything, nothing at all. They looked for the fault numerous times and couldn't find anything. During all these lengthy processes I've obviously had to use another vehicle, so time was never really a limitation, and after all that had been spent, both time and money, I was slightly annoyed with the vehicle so it sat there at my friends garage. Until the time came when he was relocating, so called me to say I needed to have my RR back. He dropped it off on the back of a tow truck.
Thoroughly peeved off with it not working, and the willing not to be beaten by it, coupled with the fact I couldn't stand seeing it look soo sad down on its bump stops every day of my life, I set about fixing it myself.
I knew I was going to need some diagnostics software, and after researching my forums, this one included, I decided to go with the RSW Solutions offering. I wanted to be able to reset faults both on the move and at home, I was content with only being able to do EAS & ABS faults on the go and carrying out any further in depth diagnostics at home, and I was impressed with the products, so I bought both their EAS reset tool and their All Comms software. I made the purchase online, on Christmas Eve funnily enough. RSW Solutions were so helpful and managed to get my order dispatched and on the way to me. It arrived the morning of New Year's Eve!
So I plugged the EAS tool in to find out what was going on. This tool is great, you can get yourself going quickly and easily without any additional hardware, and download the fault codes at a later date. Perfect for resetting errors on the move, on this occasion I was just lazy/eager to play, so I used this instead of setting up the All Comms program. I plugged the EAS tool in, waited for the green light to flash and I was good to go. Removed the tool and started the engine...a few seconds passed before the oh so familiar "air suspension inactive" flashed up before my eyes. So I went in, plugged the tool into my laptop, read the fault code and it was showing the reservoir pressure to be increasing when the vehicle tried to raise its suspension. No I thought this doesn't sound very logical, reservoir pressure should go down as you consume air, especially with the size of the tiny compressors installed in these vehicles! So I downloaded a plan of the full EAS system, and quickly realised the valve block in front of the reservoir was the most likely cause of my problem.
So determined to beat this thing, I went back outside, with torches as by this time it was getting pretty dark, I found the valve block and had a good tussle with it for over an hour before finally I had removed it, without destroying anything around its (air lines/electrical plugs & looms). Quite pleased with myself now, I took my reward in to the kitchen and proudly plonked it on the table. Having an investigative nature I was looking at it, working out how it worked and how the air flowed through, from the compressor, to and from the reservoir and suspension units. I could easily understand how this valve block worked, and although I had been told you couldn't take them apart, and or service internal components, the little TORX heads looking up at me begged some attention, after all, I was already assuming I needed to spend the £400 or so for a new, genuine, valve block!
I knew there wasn't any problem with the rear suspension so guessed the rear valves were working ok, I planned to take it apart and compare front valves to rear in the hope a problem may show itself. As it happened, it did! The front valves were clearly seized. I toyed with the idea of putting the rear valves in the front to prove my theory, but didn't bother. Instead I took on of the finest kitchen forks I could find (I wanted a strong one!) modified it to suit my intended purpose, and proceeded to poke/prod/harass each of the front valves in turn to no avail, until one of them 'popped' and begun moving as I applied pressure!!!!! I carried on with both until they each moved freely, returned them to their valve block and reassembled. When daylight broke I rushed outside, refitted the valve block (which was a real PITA, trying not to cross thread the air lines when you have little to no access is interesting, with hind sight removing the side step would've helped). Anyway, after another tussle it was in. I plugged my EAS tool in and cleared the fault. Restarted and hey presto, the front begun to raise toward the sky!!! I cannot tell you how pleased I was at this point!
I setup my All Comms software, calibrated the air suspension, ran through some other changes and everything was perfect. Took it down for an MOT, which it flew through with flying colours.
Since then, Ive spent a couple of weeks getting it ready for a ski trip to Austria, which is where you find me now writing this post. At 1300m, up in the mountains at St. Anton, with the only vehicle I would choose for the job!
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I wasn't brave enough to send the above when I was away, just encase in 'jinxed' my luck and things were not so good on the way back! ...and as it happens, when I was coming through Switzerland the engine management light begun to flash, out came the laptop, all comms quickly told me a misfire had been detected, switched over to petrol and all was fine. Since being home, I've had the LPG installer look at it, there was over 1ms difference between the injector timing on each bank, fault deemed to be a faulty injector rail, the new replacement should arrive early next week!
I have some other minor problems to work through in the mean time!
Thanks for reading.
Matt
Stopped off in Paris on the way back, to view another potential toy 
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7th Feb 2014 7:41am
