Centre Diff Lock wouldn't disengage regardless of Gear Selector Position

[Vineyard Matt]

Hi All, I'm a new owner, picked up my car from Scotland last week, driving it 500 miles home. It's a virtually new car, I doubled the mileage on it. I got round to trying out the low range and centre diff lock settings for the first time today. I found the shift selector stiff (I had read about that so kept trying) and got it to change from Low to High after a bit of a wrestle. However, there seems to be some problem where regardless of the position of the shift lever it remained 'stuck' with the Centre Diff lock on (light illuminated on Dash and ESC Offroad lit also). I must have tried every possible option, Neutral, Drive, Reverse, High Range, Low Range, Engine Off, Engine on, move the car a bit forward, handbrake on (the lot). The shift lever either fully to the Lock side or the opposite one etc. Anyway the gearbox made a grating noice once (OUCH) but whatever I did it wouldn't unlock the centre diff. I called Ineos UK, who basically have NO technical support and would only refer to roadside assistance! Has anyone else had this problem or any advice? Im fairly used to gearboxes, I have tractors and so forth so to me it feels like a problem with the Manual Shift and the 'Electric' lock. Eventually I got fed up waiting for Ineos to call back so I drove it home (diff was locked) and then after a while the light just went out, speed sensitive maybe? But either way, it has something wrong as the Lock should not be on if the lever is not in the Lock position!

Any thoughts welcome. Car is a Fieldmaster with lots of toys (Winch, Front / Rear Diffs (not used yet!) , roof rack, lighter, Goodrich tyres etc etc etc..

Am thinking the whole 'manual' low range gearbox seems a bit less 'developed' than it should be!!!

 

[DustCloud]

If the centre diff was really locked you would notice the wind-up effect pretty quickly.

 

[cmurray]

The issue will be there is some wind up in the transfer case that is stopping it from unlocking. Try putting the wheels on a loose surface to release the wind up. If you don't have close access to a loose surface, try reversing in a circle. It doesn't matter which direction you go. This should unwind the wind up.

The centre diff lock lever, if like the Land Rovers just moves a spring that pushes against the locking dog. When there is no load on the locking dog, it moves. This is why they have a light, as the lever only shows what you want, not what is. I hope this makes sense.

Regards
Craig Murray

 

[Vineyard Matt]

If the centre diff was really locked you would notice the wind-up effect pretty quickly.

Thanks DustCloud for replying. I was on gravel when all the wheels appeared to be locked (with the light illuminated) and to test it out I was doing laps on the gravel and it felt like the diff was locked as I drove. I tried moving the lever in many positions (literally all I could think of) and then slowly drove it back home (no tight turns at all) on the road. As I say the centre diff lock light eventually went out and it felt 'like normal road driving' again. My point is there must be some issue either with the Diff Lock light not extinguishing properly or the manual transfer lever in its '4' positions not releasing the lock, by that I mean, High (no lock), Low (no Lock), High (Lock), Low (Lock).

Next step will be take it to the dealer, and see if the fault repeats. My point is that something can't be right if it says its locked when the lever is on the opposite side, and also the manual lever just feels really unrefined, sometimes you can get the gear, sometimes not, it shouldn't be that you feel you might break something (with force) when a transmission is warm to get it in the gear you need.

 

[Vineyard Matt]

The issue will be there is some wind up in the transfer case that is stopping it from unlocking. Try putting the wheels on a loose surface to release the wind up. If you don't have close access to a loose surface, try reversing in a circle. It doesn't matter which direction you go. This should unwind the wind up.

The centre diff lock lever, if like the Land Rovers just moves a spring that pushes against the locking dog. When there is no load on the locking dog, it moves. This is why they have a light, as the lever only shows what you want, not what is. I hope this makes sense.

Regards
Craig Murray

Thanks Craig, that's some helpful things for me to try if it repeats and it makes sense. Lots of posts about people struggling to use the manual shift, does make me wonder how much each car was tested!

 

[Vineyard Matt]

Latest update - Ineos have replaced the transfer box under Warranty, also doing some fixes on door seals, and eventually changing door lock button which don't always lock! Still love the car.... but... do think the roof, winch, and a few other bits add a lot of weight to the car.. so not sure I'd spec that on a new vehicle

 

[Frank]

Hi All, I'm a new owner, picked up my car from Scotland last week, driving it 500 miles home. It's a virtually new car, I doubled the mileage on it. I got round to trying out the low range and centre diff lock settings for the first time today. I found the shift selector stiff (I had read about that so kept trying) and got it to change from Low to High after a bit of a wrestle. However, there seems to be some problem where regardless of the position of the shift lever it remained 'stuck' with the Centre Diff lock on (light illuminated on Dash and ESC Offroad lit also). I must have tried every possible option, Neutral, Drive, Reverse, High Range, Low Range, Engine Off, Engine on, move the car a bit forward, handbrake on (the lot). The shift lever either fully to the Lock side or the opposite one etc. Anyway the gearbox made a grating noice once (OUCH) but whatever I did it wouldn't unlock the centre diff. I called Ineos UK, who basically have NO technical support and would only refer to roadside assistance! Has anyone else had this problem or any advice? Im fairly used to gearboxes, I have tractors and so forth so to me it feels like a problem with the Manual Shift and the 'Electric' lock. Eventually I got fed up waiting for Ineos to call back so I drove it home (diff was locked) and then after a while the light just went out, speed sensitive maybe? But either way, it has something wrong as the Lock should not be on if the lever is not in the Lock position!

Any thoughts welcome. Car is a Fieldmaster with lots of toys (Winch, Front / Rear Diffs (not used yet!) , roof rack, lighter, Goodrich tyres etc etc etc..

Am thinking the whole 'manual' low range gearbox seems a bit less 'developed' than it should be!!!

it takes a while to get the measure of it, took me a couple of months, now works fine

 

[CJV]

Hi All, I'm a new owner, picked up my car from Scotland last week, driving it 500 miles home. It's a virtually new car, I doubled the mileage on it. I got round to trying out the low range and centre diff lock settings for the first time today. I found the shift selector stiff (I had read about that so kept trying) and got it to change from Low to High after a bit of a wrestle. However, there seems to be some problem where regardless of the position of the shift lever it remained 'stuck' with the Centre Diff lock on (light illuminated on Dash and ESC Offroad lit also). I must have tried every possible option, Neutral, Drive, Reverse, High Range, Low Range, Engine Off, Engine on, move the car a bit forward, handbrake on (the lot). The shift lever either fully to the Lock side or the opposite one etc. Anyway the gearbox made a grating noice once (OUCH) but whatever I did it wouldn't unlock the centre diff. I called Ineos UK, who basically have NO technical support and would only refer to roadside assistance! Has anyone else had this problem or any advice? Im fairly used to gearboxes, I have tractors and so forth so to me it feels like a problem with the Manual Shift and the 'Electric' lock. Eventually I got fed up waiting for Ineos to call back so I drove it home (diff was locked) and then after a while the light just went out, speed sensitive maybe? But either way, it has something wrong as the Lock should not be on if the lever is not in the Lock position!

Any thoughts welcome. Car is a Fieldmaster with lots of toys (Winch, Front / Rear Diffs (not used yet!) , roof rack, lighter, Goodrich tyres etc etc etc..

Am thinking the whole 'manual' low range gearbox seems a bit less 'developed' than it should be!!!

It may be a bad switch. That was the culprit on mine when I picked it up today. Took 15 minutes to replace and fix.

 

[OGrid]

Latest update - Ineos have replaced the transfer box under Warranty, also doing some fixes on door seals, and eventually changing door lock button which don't always lock! Still love the car.... but... do think the roof, winch, and a few other bits add a lot of weight to the car.. so not sure I'd spec that on a new vehicle

Glad to hear a resolution eventuated.

Any feedback from the dealer on the transfer case’s situation before they swapped it out? There seems to be some fundamental parts on this car failing way to early.

 

[Vineyard Matt]

Glad to hear a resolution eventuated.

Any feedback from the dealer on the transfer case’s situation before they swapped it out? There seems to be some fundamental parts on this car failing way to early.

Hi OGrid and the rest of you guys for reading the posts. I did ask the dealer what they found when they took it apart, they did say it was unusually stiff but they didn't say too much on the condition they found. What they did say was the transfer case was subject to a Formal recall (they never confirmed if my vehicle was built in the batch recalled) but that they would just change it anyway! They said they had done quite a few changes as part of the recall, but also they thought that few owners had really used the transfer case (here in the UK) so that it was more that people didn't know there might be a problem. I guess you have to be doing some pretty hardcore off roading in the UK to need it anyway! I went in the ditch by the road to let someone pass and it just drove out in regular High range without noticing .

I am a bit doubtful that I should have let them cut holes in the door seals as part of a 'recall', it wasn't trapping water before but I guess if it does leak after wading I can have them Warranty replaced (If I ever get to wade )

 

[emax]

I am a bit doubtful that I should have let them cut holes in the door seals as part of a 'recall',

It's a really cheap excuse to do it like that. Apparently they either have no idea where the water is coming from or they have decided that it is too expensive to properly fix the problem. Maybe they think that so few wade through deep water that the problem doesn't occur in 90% of the car.

Everything is ok with my door on the left, no water build-up. But a lot of water collects on the right and splashes on your feet when you open it.

Why should cutting a hole in something that is supposed to seal be a solution?
And why is there no hole in the seals of my left side and still no water?

They must really think we are very, very stupid.

 

[Andiamo]

I looked at mine recently after and sure enough there are two holes cut in the seal. But then it looks like we have two seals on our doors, an outer one on the door and an inner seal around the frame on the car. Looked at my wife’s G550 and there’s just the one on the car frame. Was the same on our new Defender. So maybe we don’t necessarily need two full seals as the one around the frame of the door on the car already does the job?

 

[CountyV8]

Get them to REPLACE the door seals the hole is a temp fix.

 

[Vineyard Matt]

It's a really cheap excuse to do it like that. Apparently they either have no idea where the water is coming from or they have decided that it is too expensive to properly fix the problem. Maybe they think that so few wade through deep water that the problem doesn't occur in 90% of the car.

Everything is ok with my door on the left, no water build-up. But a lot of water collects on the right and splashes on your feet when you open it.

Why should cutting a hole in something that is supposed to seal be a solution?
And why is there no hole in the seals of my left side and still no water?

They must really think we are very, very stupid.

Hi Emax (and others ) . The dealership said something quite interesting to me about the 2 seals. What had been happening when temperatures drop below freezing (is Zero tonight here!!) then sometimes water collected in the seals froze together and if you open the door and its still frozen then you rip the seals off the frame due to the ice.

Now I must say this hasn't happened to me yet, but I could see how it could happen. Wet seals, freeze and then get pulled as you try to open the door.

Im thinking I was a bit too trusting to have the seals cut as part of a 'fix', it had rained a lot but it hadn't dumped water on me but they suggested to do the 'fix' anyway.... watch this space I guess. I suspect they will review door seals over the next few months and a permanent fix will be found. its probably to do with the gutters...

 

[emax]

Get them to REPLACE the door seals the hole is a temp fix.

My agent said something different: "All campaigns have been carried out, including any seals"
And "Two cuts have to be made into the outer door seals".

I was told this in this order with around two weeks delay in between.

And as described, the left door doesn't have the water problem without such such cuts.

 

[CountyV8]

As I said before a cut in the seal is a temp fix get the dealer to replace and while you’re there get them to check safari roof drains too,
I also use https://www.detailersdomain.com/products/nextzett-gummi-pflege-rubber-care-stick

 

[emax]

the seal is a temp fix get the dealer to replace

I just cite myself:

My agent said something different: "All campaigns have been carried out, including any seals"

This was at the end of November.

 

[CountyV8]

Get them to check again with INEOS. I have had my seals replaced under warranty. It’s a loan problem get it fixed