The Range Rover’s speedo had been twitching slightly at around 50-60mph for nearly a year, and cleaning the contacts on the transducer plug didn’t help at all, but during a trip to Norolk the other day the speedo needle started bouncing all over the place for a while and then died completely.
I spoke to a few people who know about these things and they all assured me it was just a transducer failure, not uncommon on older Range Rovers and Discoverys. The parts are still available new, both Gen Parts and pattern. The price of the genuine LR transducer is £96 (+VAT), while the pattern part was priced at just £22+VAT. The pattern part is supplied by Britpart, Allmakes and Bearmach not being listed as suppliers of the part.
My experience of Bripart has been, like most people, patchy at best. While some of their parts seem good and some are Genuine Parts or OEM, many of their products are fit only for the bin and could be considered of very low quality (unfit for purpose and in some cases potentially dangerous). However, not yet sure that the fault was in the transducer, I went for the cheaper part – it’s not safety critical, after all, and is fairly simple to swap.
The new part was fitted in minutes and has cured the speedo fault. In fact, the needle seems very steady and reads very similarly to the speeds previously displayed at the same rpm in the same gears, so it would appear to be of similar accuracy to the original transducer.
The replacement work is simple – just clean the area up (left side of the transfer box output housing, just in front of the hand brake drum), remove the plug, undo the single retaining bolt, fit the splindle of the new transducer into the receiving hole in the worm gear and then refit the bolt and plug. Of course, it’d be easier with the car over a pit or on a lift.
Two weeks on and the speedo is still fine. We’ll see if it lasts, but so far I’m happy with the pattern part.
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