Hi All, I have a 2012 XF, my second one, great vehicles but some funny problems do arise..

This time I'm struggling to fix it, first sign was the dash vents not auto opening and closing properly, they worked intermittently but not consistently and varied across them which took me away from motor failure, I then turned them off auto. Next the temperature adjustment stopped working, so regardless of what I set it on it would only push out hot air, even when I tried low AC, next the vent location stopped so the air only blows through the foot vents. The fan speed works and if I turn off the climate control it all stops, so there is some control but only fan speed and off or on. The touch interface appears to work but nothing happens when I select different settings. Not sure if it's related, probably is but sometimes I get the double lock beeping sound randomly when I'm driving and the alarm has been going off randomly sometimes as well..

I've searched the threads and checked for water in a module down in the drivers footwell, reset the battery (it's fine) and bought a second hand climate control module and swapped it located in the passenger upper footwell. No change with any of the above.

Any ideas on where to go next?

Appreciate any advice, thanks.

 

Anyone?

 

Something to try... disconnect the pre-heater, access to this, remove felt panel under glovebox (RHD car) look to the right you will see a large connector (red & black). Pull off this connector & see if anything changes?

 

First with the fancy vents, just disable that in menus because your luxo barge is going on ten years old and all those niceties used to sell the car all stop working, by design, so you buy the new fancy model. Kill the folding mirrors while you're in there, it all craps out. I don't even lock the doors anymore because apparently working locks and windows for EU imports is only while they are still under warranty.

Next for the funny climate behavior, there is something called blend door actuator buried in the dash that should be looked into. I haven't had this issue but there is thousands of sensors for everything else, so if the car was scanned with proper tools it would say if there was an error with communication or operation of those systems.

This is all if your battery is less than 3 years old, random electronics popping off is a symptom of a flaky battery. Oh it will report good in testing, but that's not good enough for this car to work properly. If it's older than that you should change it for the best you can afford, no questions asked. Also don't do it yourself like on any other car, no you have a competent shop take responsibility for coordinating that with the hyper sensitive electronics on this car, else the key fobs might all stop working, because that's what they do.

Last for for the water ingress angle, the part affected is actually the passenger side fuse box. The water can seep in through the windshield washer bottle wiring and nuke the fuse box so check for all connections there for anything roasted.

 

Absolute legend, just did that and I now have control of the heating and cooling again. Does that tell me that the pre-heater is faulty or is unplugging it just a workaround? What does it do just heat up the air before the engine warms up? If it is that which is faulty and the function is as above I'll probably just leave it..

Thanks again, that's the beauty of these forums, so much information out there!

 

To be honest I don't know if its the unit pulling to much power or the car not having enough power, so it switchs things off to compensate.
Diesel engines take a very long time to get up to temperture, so the pre-heater is just for internal cabin heating assistance.

 

Understood thank you, I will put another battery on to test out whether that resolves it, I have access to some which I can use.

Will report back so hopefully anyone searching in the future can see.

 

Hey, did the new battery healed your problem?

 

Three years after the first post a sole user comes across this thread to fix her problem and yells out WELL, TURBO DAVE, DID THE NEW BATTERY SOLVE THE PROBLEM??? ANSWER ME DT!!!