Hi. I have a 2003 Range Rover, I bought it during the summer as a bit of a project, basically a light restoration, replaced arches and repainted most of it, only now is it ready for the road. It’s pretty smart looking now so I need to work through some of the issues it has. Some a knew about and some that are new. It has typically a battery drain, intermittent, but discharges very quickly when it does. I have fitted a battery brain that cuts the power and this has taken the urgency out of resolving this issue but it will need sorted eventually.

So that my wife can drive it, I need to be able to move the seats. Both did work when I bought it but have now since stopped, both of them, and I can’t work out what links them as I thought each worked/wired separately. Steering column doesn’t move either but it makes a noise when you open the door (I’m not so worried about the steering wheel). I’ve checked the fuses in the glow box 20 and 21 if I remember… we checked them all actually. Tried another seat ecu/switch panel that is known to be good on the driver side, no joy. The seat is getting power. Plugged into the computer it shows the switches are telling it to move (I don’t know how else to describe this but it seems the switches are working).

The door locks have quit too, but really I’d be happy to resolve one issue at a time, and the seats is the most pressing on the list. Any advice anyone could give me to try or look at would be great.

I had a bit of a think, done some research and I think the only thing linking the seats is a relay in the main fuse box. I removed it there and certainly it won’t work the way it is. The fuse box has been getting damp and I’m going to change the whole unit in case it has something to do with the battery drain issue… is that possible?

But my next question is… where could the water be getting in behind the dash in the passenger side?

Just to conclude this, if anyone has a similar problem… sometimes I search forums for solutions to problems but often they don’t get updated when they are fixed. I fitted an entire new fuse box, it had signs of corrosion. It came with a Seat relay. Once fitted the seats now work, and interestingly the new fuse box had an extra relay that mine was missing… and now the heated steering wheel works. I still have to find the source of the water ingress… I suspect the windscreen. I was hoping that the fuse box would cure the battery drain/not starting, it didn’t. I replaced the 019 (95ah 780cca) with a 020 (110ah 950cca), certainly the car now starts much better, although it still has drained the battery to the point of triggering the battery brain circuit breaker. But I feel that the bigger battery has more in reserve to start the car at the 11.8v the breaker cuts off at.

The source of the drain continues to elude me. It has only tripped the breaker maybe 4 or 5 times in a month… interestingly 3 of the times it has been when my wife has went shopping and left it in a car park, so I’m wondering if something to do with opening the boot to get some bags out is triggering something. It seems to sap a lot of power with the doors open. With the old battery 10 minutes with the boot and doors open and the circuit breaker would have triggered. The hunt continues