Programming keys for your Land Rover

Most high end cars have two parts to their keys. There is a mechanical key blade that physically unlocks a mechanism, and there is an invisible electronic component that talks to the security system in the car to authorize starting.

That’s why you can’t copy keys at a locksmith anymore . . . they can duplicate the mechanical part, but without the electronics the key is useless. Even worse, if the lock turns without the electronic authorization, the alarm may go off and the car may enter a locked-down state that necessitates a tow to the repair shop.

Programming or coding keys for Range Rover 4.0 and 4.6 - 1995-2001

The pushbutton keys are numbered Key 1 through Key 4. When ordering a key, you specify the number. You can only have one of each number. So for example, if you have a Key 2, and you order a second Key 2, only one of those keys will work the remote locking system.

The keys are identified by stickers which unfortunately wear off with time. The result: you kind of take your chance on key numbers when ordering new keys, unless you have the foresight to write your numbers in your owner’s book.

Synchronization of keys on these models is pretty easy. Put the key in the driver door. Turn it to lock while pressing the lock pushbutton. Hold for 5 seconds. Turn to unlock, press unlock and hold 5 seconds.

At that point, the vehicle should lock and unlock via pushbutton. If you cannot synchronize any keys the switches in the door latch may be bad, and I suggest you attend to that right away as the car will be stranded is security sync is lost.


Programming or coding keys for Range Rover – 2002 to 2005 and BMW 7 Series 1995 to 2001

This version of Range Rover was designed while BMW owned Rover, so the key programming is shared with the big Beemers . . .

1 Make sure the vehicle is unlocked and the doors are closed with windows down (so you can’t lock yourself out by mistake)
2 Put one of the keys in the ignition and turn it to the first click and then back off within five seconds to put the car into initialization mode. From this point, you must continue key programming within 30 seconds or the system times out . . .
3 Remove the key from the ignition
4 Press and hold unlock button for up to 15 seconds. While doing this, press the lock button three times within 10 seconds.
5 Release both buttons
6 If you did this right the car will answer you by locking and then unlocking the vehicle. If this does not happen, repeat from step 4
7 Repeat steps 4 and 5 with all the other keys for the vehicle (maximum of 4)
Discovery 1999-2004

The pushbutton keys in Discovery II models can only be coded by a shop with the Autologic, T4, or IDS diagnostic systems.

Programming or coding keys for Range Rover and Range Rover Sport – 2005 and up

The pushbutton keys in these models can only be coded by a shop with the Autologic, T4, or IDS diagnostic systems.

How to reset the service reminder on late model Land Rovers

To reset the service reminder on Land Rover

This tip comes from Geoff Kelly in the UK . . .

1. Insert key in ignition.
2. Press AND HOLD the trip reset button.
3. While still pressing the trip reset button, turn on the ignition. DO NOT START THE ENGINE. Just turn the ignition on.
4. Keep pressed the trip reset button until word "Service" will flash on the instrument cluster. (about 5 seconds).
5. After a while (no more than 5 seconds) the word "Service" will remain on.
6. Release the reset button.
7. Now, by pressing the reset button, the words DIST, DATE and END are cycled on display.
8. If you want to reset the service distance, cycle until DIST is shown. If you want to reset the time-to-service, cycle until DATE is shown.
9. When the desired item is selected, press and KEEP pressed the reset button until the word RESET is shown.
Do this for both items or only for the one you desire. (I've did it only for time)
10. When you've done, cycle until END appears and then press and HOLD reset button until the display will now show the current (and newly reset) distance and time until next inspection.
11. Turn off the ignition.
12. All done!

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas, everyone.

I'm not much of a holiday person but it's still a good time to think back on the year and consider everything that I (each and every one of us, really) have to be thankful for. I particularly want to recognize and thank all of you - readers and members of my online community - for making me welcome, and for giving me your support and encouragement. At the same time, I try and forget all the miserable stuff that makes me depressed . . . . and I hope for a brighter year in 2010 . . . .

I was going to put up an online form where people could sign up and join my Christmas Card Mailing list but I just did not get it together in time. Therefore, for those of you who missed my annual Christmas card by mail, I have here a hi-res downloadable version . . . And i promise to have the sign up form online in plenty of time for Christmas 2010.

I like to use my own photos for cards. This card depicts an old Buick Invicta at the Hemmings Classic Car Show which was held in Vermont in July 2009 I chose it for the vivid red and blue, which was almost as Christmasy as vivid red and green, which I did not have in my image library.

A simple brake job isn't always as simple as it looks

Many people have suggested that they can have a quick lube or corner garage do the "easy work" on their high end car, while leaving the "tough jobs" for specialists like Robison Service. That sounds like a good idea, but how do you know what the easy jobs are?

Oil changes used to be simple, but that's out the window on many cars. BMW and Mercedes dropped the dipstick, so you check level through the dash. Most cars have some complex procedure to reset the oil reminder. Many require special oils and the other fluids (like coolant) are often brand or even model-specific too. Can your corner garage get that right? And who buys the engine if they don't?

I'm not suggesting you abandon local service. What I suggest is that you have talks with your various service providers and make sure they can actually handle what you want of them. Blissful ignorance and incompetence are the bane of the auto service trade.

I'd like to show you an example of how simple service has gotten complex on a modern Land Rover. Join me while we slap some brakes on a late model LR3 . . .



In this photo you can see the brake and strut assembly. The new pads and rotors are in place and the wheels are hanging, ready to fit the tires. Do you see the strut assembly inboard of the brake? It's full of air, and the air charge is sometimes lost when the vehicle if put on a lift for a few hours. Most of the time it recovers, but occasionally, it doesn't, and it goes into fault mode.

When that happens, the fix is simple. Just hook your $10,000 IDS or Autologic system to the car and reset air suspension. Presto, you're set. But what if you don't have an IDS or Autologic . . . .??



If that's the case, you have an even bigger problem, because you can't set up the parking brake without one. Here our technician uses one of our test systems to release the parking brake cables on this LR3. If the tester isn't used properly the result is usually a smoked parting brake a few hundred miles down the road, and a fresh $800 repair bill.

It's still possible to do some work on these new vehicles at home, and local garages can still handle quite a bit of general service. For example, anyone can swap pads only - no special tools are needed for that. However, these particular Rovers are notorious for eating up rotors. Here's a worn out one to prove my point at 25,000 miles . . . .



The trick is knowing the limits of what you can do without special tools. In one of my last posts I wrote about all the trouble I had over a wrong spark plugs brand in another Land Rover. Sometimes there is just no substitute for experience.

Time for brakes and struts?

This is the look of new brakes and struts on a Porsche . . .



Struts need to be changed when they blow out. When that happens, the side of the strut will be black with dirty oil, and the vehicle will bounce like a pogo stick over bumps. All too often people look at struts during other service, and they say "These look okay" if they are dry.

But are struts really okay, just because they're not leaking?

In this car, the struts were not visibly failed. However, the car was 8 years old, and the struts had over 60,000 miles on them. In the mind of this particular owner - a driver enthusiast - that was reason enough to take the strut loose for inspection.

That proved to be a good call. When compressed and extended on the workbench, there was a night and day difference in the damping power of the old struts versus the new replacements. The old struts hardly had any damping left, it seemed. And when we installed them that feeling translated into much firmer handling. The car once again drove like new. It just goes to show, a quick visual check often fails to tell the whole story.



What about brakes? Can they be checked visually?

In the "before" photo above, you can see a ridge along the outer circumference of the brake rotor. That visible ridge is a sign the rotor is at or near the wear limit. How do I know? Simple . . . modern cars don't have a huge margin for allowable wear. But the time the wear is visible at the rotor edge, you are near the end. If you want to know more precisely, you can gauge the rotor and look up the thickness in the workshop manual, but this rule of thumb will serve you well most of the time.

There is also a good rule of thumb for pads. Most European carmakers say pads should be changed when the friction material is worn to the same thickness as the metal backing plate. You can't see that in this photo, but if you'd crawled into the monitor and looked sideways you'd surely have seen the worn pads.

Max Klawath and the Global Detour

Everyone should do something fun before they are 25. I had my years with rock n roll bands and sound companies. Today I’d like to introduce you to Max Kawlath, a German fellow who’s going round the world in a Land Rover at 23. So far he's been to France, Spain , Italy, Switzerland, Finland, Norway, Holland, England, The Faroes, Iceland, Canada and now the USA



Here's Max's Land Rover. It's a well equipped Defender 110



All Defenders are capable off road. We had to be careful with this one in brushy terrain because he has a roof top camper setup.



I met Max at the Amherst Brewery this Saturday night. He came down from Canada, where he landed when his Rover was shipped from Iceland. He stayed with my friend Julie Jones, who is hosting him here through a group called Couch Surfing



Max is on Facebook, and he has a website, Global Detour where you can follow his journey.


When I heard he was coming to town I called my friend Dave Rifken and we got our three Rovers together for what turned out to be Max’s first experience snow driving. Here are Max and Dave, on their respective Defenders:



Here are a few shots of our run . . .






We went up and over Mount Toby at the end of our day. The area is popular with hikers, and we met a group of four lost in the middle of the woods. I don’t think they had any grasp of the difficulties they’d have been in once it got dark out there. Anyway, I stuffed them into my red Discovery and brought them out of the woods.

It’s not often that we see foreign vehicles in Western Massachusetts. It was really cool, having Max and his Land Rover pass through on his way round. We wish him the best of luck in his travels . . .

Check those axles before you find yourself walking . . .

With winter coming it’s a good idea to check your car’s axles and cv joints. If you read the auto magazines, you’re already getting lots of advice about batteries, antifreeze, and wiper blades. But I’ll bet you haven’t heard a peep about axles, till now. Why not, you ask? Axles aren’t cute or sexy, and they aren’t sold by mass merchandisers. Yet they will strand you more completely than anything short of a broken timing belt.

How could such an important part of your car be so badly overlooked? I don’t know. But there you have it. Today, I am going to take you on a journey toward automotive enlightenment.

Have you considered how the power gets from your car’s engine to its wheels? Many of you know there’s a transmission between the engine and wheels, and some know there’s a differential, the thing that allows the wheels to roll at different speeds on corners.

Some of you know the differential as the thing that lets you get stuck, for it’s the differential that lets one wheel sit still on dry pavement while the opposite wheel spins helplessly on ice.

What connects that differential to the wheels? Axles. The axles are shafts with flexible joints on each end, to allow them to bend up and down as the suspension moves and the wheels steer. Those flexible joints are called cv joints, or constant velocity joints.

Each joint is packed in grease and wrapped in a flexible rubber boot. Joints are supposed to last the life of the car, but they seldom do. What happens is this: The rubber boot cracks and splits, which allows the grease to escape and gritty dirt to get in. When gravel gets exchanged for grease, the joint soon fails, and it comes apart. As soon as that happens, passengers in the vehicle experience the thrill of pedestrian conversion.

Pedestrian life isn’t too bad if it happens somewhere like New York’s Fifth Avenue, but it totally sucks at 2AM on a snowy night in Vermont. Unfortunately, that’s when joints tend to fail.

You see, a boot can crack during the summer and nothing much happens. The grease escapes slowly, but nothing really gets in to hurt the innards. However, when winter arrives, everything changes. The grease gets cold, and it gets thrown off more easily. At the same time, the axle is sprayed with wet salty water from winter roads. A joint that would survive months in the summer can come apart in weeks or days in a new England winter.

And there is no warning that this is going on . . . unless you look. So that is what I urge you to do. Here are some photos to guide you.



In this first shot, you can see a complete undamaged axle. The axle is the black shaft extending across the frame from the left. You can see the rubber boot at the axle’s right end. The wheel hub is on the far right, and the tire would be fastened to that. Chances are, you’ll see something similar if you look under your own car.



This is what a broken boot looks like. In fact, you are looking at the very same axle, when it arrived at our shop. My thumb is spreading the split boot to make it more visible. You can see the beginnings of dirt working their way into the axle.



Here’s what the axle looks like removed from the car. Now the damage is obvious.



This is what the joint looks like inside. As you can imagine, it does not thrive on dirt and salt water



And here we are, fixing the thing. Master technician Bob Toti has taken the axle apart and fitted new boots on each end after cleaning the joints and packing them with fresh grease. The whole process takes a few hours, but it’s vital to the car’s health.

Today, the roads are clean and dry. Tomorrow it may snow. Check your axles and cv joints now.