Discussion
Have had car at C. Neils and TVR Power but canot find any faults with my 1997 Chimaera 450. Twice in last week MIL light has come on, engine died then restarted OK. Have had new plugs, new leads, new coil, and new throttle position switch fitted. Stepper motor has been cleaned and the throttle chamber.Fault finder does not show anything as runs perfectly rest of the time. Does anyone have any experience of this with their car. Bit worryinfg as could happen on motorway with effin big truck behind me. Thanks a lot in advance.
The MIL light coming on is a bit of an oddity, if the car has a standard TVR chip. In all territories except North America, the MIL lamp is disabled!
Early last year, I found out how to enable it in software. Now I routinely enable it in all chips.
It will light up if there are any fault codes in the ECU. From your post it sounds like you have the Fault Code Display Unit (FCDU) fitted, so this should always show a code when the MIL light comes on. If not then there is something very weird going on! If you haven't got an FCDU then it would be a good idea to borrow or buy one, since you can leave it plugged in permanently. Can you confirm this please?
They are very popular with my Australian, African, and South American customers because you can die if you break down! Generally this means they take it quite seriously....
Possible causes for a phantom result are airflow meter (most likely to happen when hot), immobiliser dobbing out the power momentarily, or a dodgy connector in the main or fuel pump relay bases.
The best way to check the relay base connectors is to pull out the relays, and put a male spade connector into each receptacle in turn. It should offer reasonable resistance to insertion and removal. If not then you can take apart the relay base, drop out the offending receptacle and squeeze it up. This is a rare fault, but certainly not uncommon.
Good luck - and please keep us posted!
Early last year, I found out how to enable it in software. Now I routinely enable it in all chips.
It will light up if there are any fault codes in the ECU. From your post it sounds like you have the Fault Code Display Unit (FCDU) fitted, so this should always show a code when the MIL light comes on. If not then there is something very weird going on! If you haven't got an FCDU then it would be a good idea to borrow or buy one, since you can leave it plugged in permanently. Can you confirm this please?
They are very popular with my Australian, African, and South American customers because you can die if you break down! Generally this means they take it quite seriously....
Possible causes for a phantom result are airflow meter (most likely to happen when hot), immobiliser dobbing out the power momentarily, or a dodgy connector in the main or fuel pump relay bases.
The best way to check the relay base connectors is to pull out the relays, and put a male spade connector into each receptacle in turn. It should offer reasonable resistance to insertion and removal. If not then you can take apart the relay base, drop out the offending receptacle and squeeze it up. This is a rare fault, but certainly not uncommon.
Good luck - and please keep us posted!
Mark,
Icb was keen to contact me (which I have done), but I suffered a MIL light on mine. Ended up with a blown ECU and a large bill to fix - well to locate what had blown the ECU to start with, there was no point fixing it and then having another £450.00 bill for a new one....
Anyway, Simon at Offord thinks it was the Lambda sensors that failed and because they carry current (I think), they passed something to the ECU which fried some chips. Not sure if this is 100% correct, but seems pretty plausible to me. Everything checked out fine with fuel pump & pipes, spark plugs and leads, alternator and fuse box / relays in good health. Pretty much stripped the engine to find out what caused it.
Oh, and one useless piece of warning - for the 4.0 Chimaera its a standard Land Rover part. However, the 4.0HC has a custom chip, while the 4.0 has a standard Land Rover one. I managed to get an ECU and 4.0HC chip, but they are getting scarce now and I think that access to supplies is getting pretty thin on the ground - and this isnt TVR's fault, its BMW in their infinite wisdom that decided to stop making them when they were in command..... lets not forget that this affects us RV8 engined TVR's but also Land Rover Defenders, Discoveries and Range Rovers..... Thanks a bunch.....NOT
Icb was keen to contact me (which I have done), but I suffered a MIL light on mine. Ended up with a blown ECU and a large bill to fix - well to locate what had blown the ECU to start with, there was no point fixing it and then having another £450.00 bill for a new one....
Anyway, Simon at Offord thinks it was the Lambda sensors that failed and because they carry current (I think), they passed something to the ECU which fried some chips. Not sure if this is 100% correct, but seems pretty plausible to me. Everything checked out fine with fuel pump & pipes, spark plugs and leads, alternator and fuse box / relays in good health. Pretty much stripped the engine to find out what caused it.
Oh, and one useless piece of warning - for the 4.0 Chimaera its a standard Land Rover part. However, the 4.0HC has a custom chip, while the 4.0 has a standard Land Rover one. I managed to get an ECU and 4.0HC chip, but they are getting scarce now and I think that access to supplies is getting pretty thin on the ground - and this isnt TVR's fault, its BMW in their infinite wisdom that decided to stop making them when they were in command..... lets not forget that this affects us RV8 engined TVR's but also Land Rover Defenders, Discoveries and Range Rovers..... Thanks a bunch.....NOT
Mark Adams said:
The best way to check the relay base connectors is to pull out the relays, and put a male spade connector into each receptacle in turn. It should offer reasonable resistance to insertion and removal. If not then you can take apart the relay base, drop out the offending receptacle and squeeze it up. This is a rare fault, but certainly not uncommon.
This is why mine was eating fuel pump relays at one point.Gassing Station | Chimaera | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff