With all paperwork at hand I showed-up in the port of Halifax to collect my car. Completing the exit documents in the Ceres offices were quickly done. The Defender was nicely parked in a row with other camper vans.
At first sight all doors of the Defender were taped with red and blue security seals, indicating that apart of the drivers door no other door was opened when the vehicle left the port of Hamburg. From the outside I could not identify any additional dent in the body work. The interior looked as it was handed over to the shipping company a couple of weeks back.
The keys were in the ignition lock. Let’s turn the key to ignition, ups nothing. Ok, someone turned the total kill switch to off. Next try and the immobilizer alarm went on. The alarm could not be shut off when pressing the unlock button of the immobilizer remote control. Oh well, Canada we got a problem. Although I received much appreciated help form all terminal operation guys the issue could not be resolved on site.
The first time in my driving career I was forced to order a towing truck to pick-up a car. With the help of the terminal operation guys a towing company was on site the next Friday morning and took my Defender to the next Land Rover dealer in Halifax.
I explained to Ted, the service engineer, the car’s health issue and left the car with him. The garage promised to slot-in the car for repair whenever their schedule it allows. In the afternoon I gave Ted a call. The good news, the car was running again after a couple of tweaks were made with a service laptop via the OBD2 interface. However, now the dashboard indicator lights were all dark. Well, in this stage the garage did not want to release the car on a Friday afternoon.
After a nice sunny weekend I showed up at the Land Rover garage on Monday morning. Ted and I discussed a few potential areas from where the electrical fault might stem from. Soon after the service laptop was hooked-up again. Before doing any major work all fuses were checked. To our surprise one fuse had the wrong Ampere and another one was missing. Upon replacing the wrong fuse and installing the missing fuse, all dashboard lights went on again.
Problem solved.
As a happy camper I was able to drive to the next food store to load the basic supplies into my car. Finally, after weeks of waiting the adventure can be begin.
