How-To: Prepare Your Land Rover for Summer Heat

J.E. Robison of Robison Service in Massachusetts  provides a timely article on prepping your Land Rover for hot summer weather.  He discusses summer driving tips and how to make sure your air conditioning and cooling systems are in tip top shape.  He reports on a little bit of this and that too, including Range Rover keys and some recalls from Land Rover.

Excerpt:

If your fans do not blow at high speed open the fuse box behind the battery and pull out the yellow relays one by one. Inspect them for brown discoloration and replace any damaged ones. These relays are a common cause of blower trouble.

One cause of burned blower relays is clogged cabin filters. These filters (LR part BTR8037) are located behind covers to either side of the windshield wipers. If they get plugged the blower will have to strain to bring air into the vehicle and the relays may then overheat. Depending upon local conditions — dust and pollen — you may need to change these filters at anywhere from a 15,000 to a 50,000 mile interval.

If your system is adjustable on one side but not the other — meaning one side is stuck on hot, cold, or somewhere between you probably have a bad servo motor set. Land Rover sells these servos in sets of three (left, right, and center blend). A VERY resourceful owner could replace these items at home but most people will do better to find a specialist. This repair takes most of a day to complete. If you have this problem the notebook symbol will be visible in the control panel.

Another issue that I am often asked about are keys. The P38 vehicles use a "switchblade" type electronic key. People offer these keys on Ebay with the suggestion that you can simply buy a new blade and program the key for your car. Don’t waste your money!! The electronic box part of the key must be coded for your car by Land Rover North America — not a dealer. As far as I know there is nobody recoding these keys, so a key for your truck will talk to your truck and no other. You cannot buy a key for someone else’s P38 and program it for your truck.

Read the full article here.