Last year in October, I experienced my first major fault. I was in a sketchy part of town at night and had just dropped a friend off at his car. Upon restarting my LR3, I was Christmas treed with fault messages for transmission, HDC, park brake, etc. The car would not shift out of first gear and the suspension would not raise out of access mode. I tried rebooting the system numerous times, but the faults would not clear. It was late, the family was agitated, and I had just done a 100 mile bicycle ride, so I limped the vehicle home. First gear in access mode on the freeway makes for a not fun ride. At this point, the car was about 500 miles past warranty. Oddly enough, the next morning all the faults were gone and the car behaved as if nothing had happened. There had been a considerable amount of rain the previous evening, so I thought that maybe the faults were due to an electrical connection getting wet.
All was fine until a few weeks ago. It had been a clear day with no recent rain. Upon starting the LR3, I was Christmas treed with the above faults. Tried multiple reboots, but the faults would not clear. I drove home and assumed that the faults would disappear overnight. The faults stayed like a bad house guest. With 54k miles on the car, I was concerned that repairs would be expensive.
After doing much web research, particularly on disco3.co.uk, I tried disconnecting the battery leads and shorting them (not the battery terminals!) for as long as 15 minutes. This was reported as being a way to clear out faults, perhaps like discharging the RAM on a home computer, but it didn't work for me. The strange thing is that the radio still retained its presets and the navigation would remember which menu page it was last (offroad mode). There is probably another battery for retaining that information, but I don't think it is related to the faults. I also tried replacing the battery entirely, as numerous people had posted that the LR3 is very sensitive to low voltages. The replacement battery was an Interstate MTP-H8, but the faults did not go away.
After driving around with the faults for over two weeks, I finally surrendered my wallet to the dealer. When I later picked up the car, the service advisor wasn't in, but the paperwork indicated that all the faults were due to a brake switch issue. The part was replaced and all the faults were cleared. I still have not contacted the service adviser to discuss what the specifics of the problem were.
My LR3 has been a real joy to drive 99.99% of the time. It's the 0.01% that drives me nuts and, dare I say, makes me regret buying such a computerized vehicle. With my past vehicles, if there was a problem, it was fairly easy to identify and repair. If the problem was too complicated to handle myself, I would take it to a mechanic, but I at least still knew what the problem was even though I could not fix it. With the faults I had on the LR3, I had no clue what the root of the issue was. Going to the dealer was a bit scary from a financial perspective, and the service advisor's comment, "you are out of warranty and you don't have the extended warranty," made me even more scared. Had they been an unscrupulous dealer, they could have milked me for a lot of money, all because I had no clue what the problem with the vehicle was. I was totally at their mercy, and I didn't feel comfortable with that.
All has been well with the LR3 for the past week. The best I can do is keep up with regular maintenance and hope that I don't get Christmas treed again.
