Hi all,
I have a strange and ongoing issue with my freelander 2 (2007 2.2 auto) which I am wondering if anyone else has encountered and solved?
It starts off as a shuddering at around 2000 to 2500 RPM a bit like going over a cattle grid. Once you are not at this sweet (or not so sweet!) spot then it goes away. However in time the crank shaft sensor totally dies. It started stalling out july 2019, with a crank shaft sensor error.. so in went a new one which died totally in August (leaving me and caravan closing the road out of Salisbury!). New sensor in again. more juddering Since April this year. replaced sensor, this time juddering didn't go away. serious juddering this week on the way to holiday with the caravan and then crank shaft sensor death again. New sensor put in again 2 days back (luckily by now I carry a spare!). Running again but with lots of juddering!

So what might kill crankshaft sensors and cause juddering I wonder.

I also wonder if it is related to the new timing/trigger wheel and crankshaft pulley we fitted a couple of years back when changing the cam belt. That was an odd one as the '07 car had a thicker trigger wheel and thinner crank pulley than later models. The only ones available now are with a really thin trigger wheel and a thicker pulley. So we had to swap both the trigger wheel and the pulley. Perhaps it is now slightly misaligned. It isn't possible it seems to source the exact ones.

My only other thought would be the wiring to the sensor. I am off out now to resistance test the wires back to the ecu. Also to volt meter the supply to the sensor (I think it is 3 wire with one sense, and 2 supply wires).
I tested it last year ago though and it was ok (but the symptom had gone then).

total nightmare!

I've just come in from investigating the wiring. What a pain it is with Freelanders that you have to remove the windscreen wipers to get to the ECU!
Anyhow I checked continuity between the ECU connector and the 3 wires at the Crank shaft sensor and all 3 were good. I then checked the voltage between pin 1 and 3 of the sensor when the ignition was on, these were correct at 5v.
I am not sure where my oscilloscope is at the moment, I'd need to hunt it out to check the other pin (as the middle pin is a variable voltage encoded signal via the hall sensor).
Then I put it back together and it didn't start (which is actually a good thing). Wiggling and removing the plug and putting it back in again allowed me to toggle between working and not working. So it seems the plug is the fault for the total 'failure' I saw this week. It is quite possibly the reason for the killing of the sensor last year too (that one really was dead, although you can't easily test them i could swap between it and a new one and get working/not working).

I doubt this will have fixed the shuddering, we will see tomorrow when I can test drive it (I can't now as I am home alone with the kids who are in bed). I suspect what happened is the shuddering shakes the bad connector. and so there are two separate issues - as is so often the case!

shuddering (issue unknown) --> causes bad connector to come loose causing engine to stop.

I will update tomorrow when I see if the shuddering remains.

on the landyzone forum someone has pointed out that the shudder could well be the torque converter clutch in the auto box. Google had hinted to me that was a possibility, though I had hoped not.

I've ordered a used engine loom to graft the crank shaft sensor plug from. I am fairly sure now that this is a separate issue to the vibration, probably exasperated by it.

shame I can't source a new crankshaft sensor plug. did a lot of googling!

The freelander seems to be fixed!

I carefully unpicked the used wiring loom and extracted the 3 wires from the Crankshaft sensor all the way back to the ecu, and cut them a couple of inches from the ecu.

I then also removed all the insulating tape from the used loom and salvaged as many thin conduit parts as possible.

Next I plugged my plug with the long 3 wires (recovered from the used loom) into my car's crank shaft sensor, and then covered the 3 wires with bits of salvaged condiuit and new insulating tape to make a new loom part.
this i then routed more sensibly than the original one so it doesn't get so hot and also isn't susceptible to getting covered in oil that may leak from the rigid-to-turbo air pipe (it gets oil in it from the crank ventilation).
My route is up the side of the engine, clipping behind the radiator hose mount.. and then just below the windscreen wiper flat cover. I drilled some holes in this part of the firewall and cable tied it along the top of the firewall there. Then one larger hole in the firewall, slightly right of center, where the conduit enters the firewall. my 3 wires are then patched into the loom at the ecu central plug.

How did I know which wires? welll there are loads of them, but I found two of the colours as a twisted pair (lucky as the colors are not unique) and then the single other wire. Each of these I resistance tested against the old plug to check I had the right ones, before removing the ecu plug, choc-bloking them to the new loom, replacing the ecu plug and seeing if the car started. It did, so I removed the plug again and soldered them in place, with heat shrink over them.

I have now done a 60 mile varied driving style test solo and 40 miles with the caravan and the issue appears to have gone. Lets hope it is indeed gone as I have 5 hours of driving with the caravan to complete on saturday!

Here are the pics
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1oG...sp=sharing

Wow epic battle hopefully won! Its as well you had the ability to carry out all the fault finding yourself , hate to think how much a garage would charge for all that, and maybe not even resolve the issue.  Landrover - turning owners into mechanics since 1948

2014 Orkney grey Freelander SD4 GS.
2004 Zambezi silver Discovery 2 Td5 (Gone)
1963 Surf blue Morris Mini Minor Super de Luxe (my little toy)

Perseverance and logic paying off! Well done!  2013 SD4 SE (hers)
2013 SD4 HSE (mine)
Ex: 2008 D3 V8 HSE
EX: 2000 D2 TD5

@jtq4u impressive fix -well done and thanks for sharing Jules

Thanks Guys.

Lets hope the holiday is non eventful at the weekend!

When I return I will address the oil seepage from the joint in the induction pipe after the PCV and before it dives down to the right to the turbo. I blame that for destroying the sensor plug/wiring. there was oil actually coming out of the conduit all the way down at the sensor. I am asking on the landrover forum as to how much PCV oil leek off people expect to have - as I need to decide whether the PCV needs investigating or just that joint needs improving. It's a weekness in the car as it gets bent all over the place when you change the air filter, or it gets removed and rejoined each time. Either way it gets disturbed.

FL1 used to have an oil/air filter but apparently the FL2 doesnt. Probably because of the catastrophic failures the blocked filter used to cause. Instead it has a seperator. I've never looked at the FL2 one. In a recent (perhaps 5 years old) Defender I worked on this comprised of a spinny thing. I'd rather not meddle with it though if we are just to expect some seepage.

Update:
it seems like this is a hot topic:
https://www.freel2.com/forum/topic31972.html?highlight=pcv

jtq4u wrote:

The freelander seems to be fixed!

I carefully unpicked the used wiring loom and extracted the 3 wires from the Crankshaft sensor all the way back to the ecu, and cut them a couple of inches from the ecu.

I then also removed all the insulating tape from the used loom and salvaged as many thin conduit parts as possible.

Next I plugged my plug with the long 3 wires (recovered from the used loom) into my car's crank shaft sensor, and then covered the 3 wires with bits of salvaged condiuit and new insulating tape to make a new loom part.
this i then routed more sensibly than the original one so it doesn't get so hot and also isn't susceptible to getting covered in oil that may leak from the rigid-to-turbo air pipe (it gets oil in it from the crank ventilation).
My route is up the side of the engine, clipping behind the radiator hose mount.. and then just below the windscreen wiper flat cover. I drilled some holes in this part of the firewall and cable tied it along the top of the firewall there. Then one larger hole in the firewall, slightly right of center, where the conduit enters the firewall. my 3 wires are then patched into the loom at the ecu central plug.

How did I know which wires? welll there are loads of them, but I found two of the colours as a twisted pair (lucky as the colors are not unique) and then the single other wire. Each of these I resistance tested against the old plug to check I had the right ones, before removing the ecu plug, choc-bloking them to the new loom, replacing the ecu plug and seeing if the car started. It did, so I removed the plug again and soldered them in place, with heat shrink over them.

I have now done a 60 mile varied driving style test solo and 40 miles with the caravan and the issue appears to have gone. Lets hope it is indeed gone as I have 5 hours of driving with the caravan to complete on saturday!

Here are the pics
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1oG...sp=sharing

The usual fix for the oil leak is replacing the original clamp with a jubillee clip. 
Hung like Einstein, smart as a horse.

I was interested to know whether replacing the wires fixed the problem with crank sensors dying well and good. MY10 TD4 SE Auto

All sorted. The problem was with the crankshaft sensor connector / plug. If anyone is having the same problem and would like to get it fixed, read my comments here (link below) or send me a message to discuss further:

https://www.freel2.com/forum/topic37181.html MY10 TD4 SE Auto

impact wrote:

I was interested to know whether replacing the wires fixed the problem with crank sensors dying well and good.

I thought that I should revive this thread to explain how a similar problem afflicted my 63 plate SD4:

I bought the car in February 2024 from a chap in Mudeford who, with the benefit of hindsight, I suspect knew that the car had a problem, hence was selling it having only owned it for 10 months.

The car is an HSE and had only done 40,000 miles or so, and is in immaculate condition.

Anyway, within a few days of ownership I noticed that the car would occasionally hesitate, and inexplicably drop a gear.

SDD showed absolutely no relevant powertrain fault codes.

Never the less I replaced the crankshaft position sensor as a precaution, which was when I suspected some history, because the outgoing sensor had a date code identifying it as being far newer than the car, so it had clearly been replaced quite recently.

While the car was in the air I also looked for damaged cables, but found nothing, and wiggling cables made no difference.

My next thought was a gearbox snag, so I gave it a thorough flush with new fluid, but the problem persisted.

Sometimes the hesitation was quite violent, so I began to suspect that maybe one of the engine torsional control mounts was either the cause, or was getting hammered as a consequence.

Replacing all four mounts made a significant difference: the hesitation still occurred, but very briefly, less violently and the gearbox never changed down.

Next I cleaned all the earths, and made sure that the loom under the air filter box wasn’t chafing on the body seam.

Still no change, but gradually I realised that the hesitation followed a pattern: it only ever occurred when accelerating or climbing a hill. It was always very brief – I would guess lasting only a few hundred milliseconds - so pointed to something electrical rather than mechanical. (and again, bear in mind: no fault codes)

Over the past five months it has occurred with ever greater regularity, until finally three weeks ago, 'hallelujah!' the car did it and came to a grinding halt, thankfully at low speed, wouldn't re-start, and thankfully I had a code reader in the car.

P0366 Crankshaft Position Sensor!

At which point I felt mildly guilty because I had replaced the sensor with a Bosch item, rather than doing what many people recommend which is only ever to fit a genuine part.

So I duly splashed out £100 on the genuine Land Rover part, only to find no improvement!

Interestingly at that time I also compared genuine (with FoMoCo letters in the molding) and Bosch (with that area of the sensor ground away to occult the characters.

Conclusion: Bosch make the Ford/JLR products which are identical to the quarter price pattern version.

Back to the story, with the problem apparently being the sensor signal I took a punt and replaced the reluctor ring – still no improvement, but by now the fault was getting so frequent that on a hot day I could provoke the problem at will on any hill, sometimes with immediate failure to progress.

Moreover, after failure, when allowed to cool down, the car would happily re-start and drive for 10+ miles without repetition of the problem.

This apparent thermal characteristic convinced me that it could only be the ECU, and thankfully got hold of a suitable replacement for £75, and a further £75 to have mine cloned bit-for-bit, or possibly byte-for-byte, in to the spare.

Guess what? Problem still persisting, but now getting so frequent that on a hot day I could provoke a stutter or stall whilst stationary, by simply by selecting Drive, holding left foot on the brake, whilst adding a bit of throttle with the right foot.

Interestingly, by doing this in Reverse, instead of Drive, the problem never manifested itself.

(Wish I’d tried that before wasting money on the ECU, because I doubt that the ECU gives a monkeys which way it’s going)

So, my conclusion was that it has to be a wiring snag with the torque reaction movement of the engine somehow trapping or moving a cable, which is of course commensurate with the original “it only happens on hills” statement.

Consequently, this afternoon armed with some Raychem Type 44 screened twisted pair, and some convolute tube, I made a new sensor wiring assembly:

I cut the sensor socket back to reveal the pins, then soldered the cable to them, then superglued the socket shroud back in place as a mould which filled with araldite to insulate and stress relieve the cable and the convolute tube. Thus I don’t have plug/socket interface at the crank, and will need to make up an identical spare for the future.

At the ECU end I cut the old cables back, but left them in the loom.

This after a few miles on the hottest day of the year appears to have cured the problem: I can accelerate up hills, at will, with no hesitation. Happy!!

If anyone else intends to do this, beware that the SD4 connections to the ECU are different to those of the earlier cars and the OP’s, and use the middle connector of the three, on pins 14, 28 and 51 for OV, signal , and +5V respectively.

Finally in this tale, I’d like to ask a favour please:

I remain concerned that if the loom is compromised by engine movement, then the crank sensor may not be the only cable to be vulnerable, and I may have a further failure waiting in the wings. Try as I might I cannot find an image of the routing of the engine bay loom, so can’t figure out how or where the crank sensor cable sits. I know from wiring diagrams that it’s 1810mm long, but that’s all.

So, if some kind person happens to have a routing diagram for an SD4 then I’d be eternally grateful to see it, please…?

Last edited by Zulu 10 on 30th Jul 2024 7:41 pm. Edited 1 time in total

Have you changed the crank sensor plug? They seem to suffer from contact spreading, which causes a less than perfect connection, and rapid crank sensor failure.

I believe the LR sensor is made my Febi-Bilstein, and is probably sold to other manufacturer's too. Hyundai Ioniq 5 Ultimate. The family car.
2009 Rimini Red SE TD4. Gone.
2006 Tonga Green i6 HSE. Gone.
Audi A5 convertible, my daily driver.
1972 Hillman Avenger GT, the project.