Bit of a funny request this one;

There’s quite a nice vogue to match mine for sale in northumberland for what appears to be a very handsome price and was wondering if there was anyone in an accessible radius to go and inspect for me (for a fee) if practicable.

I live in kent and fly to greece on saturday, however after missing out (frustratingly) on another clean example this weekend, i don’t fancy letting this one pass by if i can help it.

If there is anyone that would be happy to fulfil and has availability this week, let me know :)

My P38 is currently SORN’d, so I’ve been thinking about a few little projects while it’s off the road.

One idea is to recolour the leather seats to something closer to the Holland & Holland interior, ideally a dark saddle/bridle brown.

Has anyone done something similar, or know of a good leather colour/shade that would suit the P38 and look fairly OEM?

Hello all,
long time listener, first time poster,
"Engine disabled, press fob" on dash -> I press fob "start engine" -> engine starts fine,
happens irregularly, more often than not, however not every start.. never any other issues, engine always starts.. started happening a few months ago now..
wondering if anyone knows any causes? issues? fixes? Just gets rather annoying!
vehicle is 2001 p38 4.0l
Thank-you for your help
Chris

So Imgur have blocked users in the UK from accessing their site, have done for a while.

Miah reminded me the other day that I'd mentioned something about putting some mitigation in place. I have a couple of things in mind, either:

a) modify posts containing imgur links to point through a third-party proxy

b) download photos from imgur and host them locally where possible

Or I guess c) some combination of the above.

Both would require the content of your posts to be edited to change the link, which obviously I'd do with a script, damned if I'm doing every single one of them by hand over and over.

A further refinement would be to devise some sort of plugin for the forum that would just sort this automagically in the background, which would involve upgrading the forum software, which would involve me taking a bit of time to actually package up the updated software.

Thoughts, anyone?

.
.. Yes, the Greater London ULEZ finally takes its toll on my P38 ownership....
.. as after three years of ULEZ in OUTER London at £12.50/day (or £18.50 with Congestion Charge) it is time to go; SAD !

1995 GEMS 4.0 and I have owned it for 25 years - less than 90K miles; Any suggested ballpark prices ??
(It has all kinds of the usual issues, ding/dongs and lacquer peel etc - as per m/any 30+ year vehicles)
Runs ok/MOT etc

PS: NOT "We Buy Any Car dot Con" !

Looks like the big red beast has a leak from the rear crankshaft oil seal, messy rather than serious but Malcom the MoT man is stating to suggest that it ought to be done.

So which is the best way in?

Gearbox out or engine out? Looks to me that engine out is more straight-forward. as my lift is only a half height type. Begin at the front and just keep taking bits off until you have clearance. Looks like a day to get out and a day to get back in working at a sensible pace. I'd prefer to have it done for me but no one round here wants to take the job. Usually the stupid excuse way rather than honest refusal. Which is annoying but helps to show who an be trusted when I finally have to admit I can't mange.

Anything else that ought to be done whilst it's out and get-actable. Exhaust heat shields obviously. Also the big red beast has always used a little bit of water on start-up but basically same amount per trip whether it's 4 miles or 400. Investigate or don't poke with stick? I'd put money on it having had a gasket seal nostrum put in before I got it which isn't quite up mot the job.

Going by what I've been quoted for doing the seal its tempting to take the engine up to V8 Developments for a refresh and stage one tune once its out, but dunno if I can loose the car for a month. Probably won't be that much more expensive than local quotes for doing the rear seal.

Clive

2002 with 120k miles on the clock
I continue to run through the 02 Borego here and knock off the various minor issues.
The last thing I am chasing is a rhythmic rotational growling noise that manifests between 30 and 50 mph. I think its always there, It is just loudest between those speeds
I have replaced the Ujoints as a matter of policy on any P38 I get, and confirm those are good. I seriously suspected a bad tire or 2 as the sound is exactly
what you would get from a bad tread. Tires are new Yokohama Geolandars, which I have always used and never got a noisy one. I eliminated that by taking
all 4 tires and wheels off of Bolt and swapping them to the Borego. New tires from Borego smooth as silk on Bolt and the vibration is still there on Borego.
Wheel bearings feel very good when jacked up and twisted and torqued in all directions with a breaker bar. No play and smooth rotation.
Diff fluid was changed on both when I got it, and it came out crystal clear with no shavings on the drain plug magnet.
This leaves me with CV joints, but again, no noise and smooth when rotated .
As I was under there this evening checking the Ujoints again, I noticed a bit of slop in the transfer case forward output shaft bearing......
I think this may be the source of the noise. Anyone have other suggestions, I am glad to hear them.
So, looking at it, it appears that it can be removed from the transfer case without dropping the whole thing?
Has anyone done this to replace bearing or shaft seal? I have done a transfer case R&R in the past, so not intimidated, but I am now older and lazier, so
if it can be avoided, that would be great!

Good Morning from Switzerland

I hope everyone had a great weekend without to many mechanical issues so far! :) I noticed that my RR started making this noise when slowly driving. I'm not sure if this is related but on higher speeds (around 100kmh) when releasing the gas pedal, a vibration can be felt for around 10 seconds.

I know it is very hard to make a diagnosis without checking underneath the car. However, I'm wondering if this might be an urgent fix? I'm not driving the RR daily and will be in Germany around Christmas with access to a car workshop (I would be able to save a lot of money if it can wait this long). Thank you very much for every suggestion.

In case the sound does not work: Video with sound

I went to start the car to go to the garage to fill up with fuel prior to setting off for a week in Wales. Unfortunately the battery was utterly dead. The voltmeter showed 2.7V It is a Hankook MF3100-1000 purchased from Battery Megastore nearly five years ago & had shown no signs of problems before. I tried charging overnight but it only showed 10.7V so looks like it is totally knackered.

I have an old battery I bought form Halfords about nine years ago. It worked well in the car for four years until I swapped it for the Hankook as BMS had a good deal. This had last been charged over a year ago but still showed 11.7V. I put this in the car & was able to jump start using the another old car battery I have that won't fit the P38. I put the Halfords battery on charge overnight & in the morning it showed 12.7V & had sufficient charge to use the remote locking/unlocking but not to start the car. I decided to order a new Hankook MF3100-1000 from BMS & have it delivered to our Welsh holiday cottage. We set off for Wales making a detour via Halfords to buy one of those Li-ion jump start battery packs as unfortunately the one that I bought about ten years back was knackered & no longer functioning. My wife sat in the car with the engine running while I popped into Halfords to collect the device which cost just over £100.

We made a couple of stops on the way. Once for coffee & a sandwich where I was able to start the car normally but when we stopped for petrol about half an hour later I had to use the jump start battery pack. When we arrived at the cottage I had an email form BMS confirming the order but with the delivery address as my home not the holiday cottage. I think the mess up must have been with their ordering system as I recall setting a delivery address different to the billing address & even added a note explaining why the delivery address was different to the billing address. I briefly considered ordering another Hankook MF3100-1000 from BMS delivered to the holiday address then return the other battery when I get home. I then decided the hassle & expense of shipping back a 25kg battery didn't make sense.

We have now been in Wales for five days with a nearly dead battery but have been managing OK. The car always starts easily & when hot usually doesn't need the jump start pack. Using the jump start pack only takes a minute or two & hasn't been much of an inconvenience but I will be glad to get back & fit the new battery that was delivered in under 24 hours. Lead acid batteries don't usually suddenly fail without warning but it does happen sometimes & this one was outside its four year warranty.

Hi all, looking for some advice on a starting/fuel issue with my P38 4.6 V8.

Today it suddenly developed a very consistent starting problem:

• If the car has been parked for around 30 minutes or longer, the first attempt will crank normally but won’t fire.
• I stop cranking, turn the key again, and on the second attempt it fires up normally.
• If it’s only been switched off for a few minutes, it seems to restart fine.
• I was running fairly low on petrol, so I added 20 litres, but the problem remains.
• There’s also now a confirmed strong smell of petrol inside the cabin.
• Once it starts, it appears to run normally.
• Car is LPG converted but starts on petrol.

I’m wondering if this could be fuel pressure bleeding down after shutdown, possibly fuel pump/check valve, pressure regulator or a leaking injector. The petrol smell obviously makes me concerned there could be an actual leak somewhere as well.

Has anyone experienced this exact first crank = no start, second crank = immediate start behaviour on a 4.6 P38? Anything specific you’d recommend checking first?

Thanks!

So today we have my first call to you lovely lot as googling my symptons doesnt seem to return any results that match…

After a quite worrying phantom throttle incident last week (promptly fixed by re-attaching the cruise control apparatus which was just floating around in the bay), i seem to be struck by a very light involuntary throttle input while in drive.

Any other normal torque converter car in my experience will quite literally idle creep, however for “the duchess” as we shall remain calling her, this isn’t enough. The revs will actually pick up and the car will creep along until it breaks into a brisk walk and it will even upshift itself into second. All the while my foot is nowhere near the go pedal. Now the weird thing is that the car will idle very steadily at the 700rpm that it should be, yet as soon as drive is selected, it goes up to 1000 and acts as though i have ever so slightly teased the throttle. This immediately tells me my throttle cable is not under any more tension than it should be.

I plugged the nanocom in at the weekend when i was sorting my previous throttle (cruise control) issue out and was met with a myriad of old stored codes (none current), however just to be sure i reset the throttle adaptations to give it a clean slate with my fix.

I shall now open up the floor, any experience with this issue before? Any pointers as to where i should be looking, whether thats IACV, TPS or even adjusting throttle cable despite a correct idle? Would it be a calibration issue with the ECU? Is my TC simply locking up far too soon and prompting the ECU to apply a voltage to the throttle to save a stall situation?

Any advice is dearly welcomed :)

I needed to change the large rubber hose from the fuel filler neck to the tank. In the process a 10mm (ED) nylon line which goes into a rubber hose (8mm ID )on top of the tank came out...and i cant ger it back in...and the rubber is inaccesible for boiling water...i was thinking i could put a warm jacket on the rubber to heat it up? Or should i just insert a quick fit connector in any case?

Any other bright ideas?

I’d like some…. But not that much 😆

https://ebay.io/m/IaUrjV

sorry not a p38 but just if anyone comes across a electronic park brake be warned they not hard to work on just a pig to get out

so after pulling the emergency release cable last week on my MY10 discovery 4 3liter
I took the EPB module off (pig of a job to do with out a lift ) had a investigation of the module only to find someone had been it previously and adjusted the whole shaft up to the point of no return, so after setting the shaft back to half way and refitting applied the hand break to take up the slack then realised so i could adjust the break adjuster so the hand break was on then unwind back 10 turns i now have a fully working EPB again

I've had an intermittent massive drain for a while - every so often, no real pattern to it, I'll go out to the car and it'll be sitting about 9 volts. I figured it was the usual battery drain issue but unplugging the keyfob receiver didn't make any difference.

Yesterday morning was a lovely bright morning and reasonably cool, and wouldn't you know it, the battery was flat, down to 7 volts. I opened the bonnet to jump start it, and realised that the battery was warm to the touch (it's not a great battery, it's one I was using with a solar panel to play with inverters, but I thought I'd swap it just to see).

Not only was the battery warm but the alternator was warm. Nothing else under the bonnet was, and the last time it had been driven was about 6 hours previously so while it wasn't exactly ice cold it wasn't residual heat. There was a hell of an "inductive-looking" spark when I put the jump leads on too.

I replaced the alternator recently, but it was doing this before - I changed it because the voltage was swinging up and down quite a bit and have the old one sitting in my shed waiting to be rebuilt.

Later on yesterday after it had been sitting outside work all day, even with the sun shining on it the alternator was cold.

So, why would it be doing this? RAVE says that it senses voltage on pin 15 of the BECM which is what I'd think of as the D+ terminal, but does that get powered by the BECM when you turn the ignition on? Could this be something like a relay in the BECM sticking on?

I haven't got a power board kicking about to check but I bet it's the sort of thing that Marty knows... ;-)

Greetings from Southernmost Kent.

I am a very proud new owner of a certain epsom green V8 Vogue which i happened to pry away from an existing member on here (hello Morat).

Im building a mental list currently of some bits i may need some technical expertise with and i’m sure i’ll be back very soon asking very important and thought-provoking issues for the p38 overlords to sink their teeth into.

For now, hello and nice to meet you all :) she is in safe hands.

Aloha,
I need to send off one of my fobs for repair. Bad switches, it seems.
Just wondering who / where is the current favourite service centre?
I had a look on Ebay, and there are a large number of identical looking ads.......I know Gilbert has recommended someone recently, but my
search super powers seem to have failed me when I tried to find the link to the Ebay guy.
Cheers!

I have had very good luck with the EAS on all of the P-38s I have owned, so I guess I was due for this one!

Been having a hard time getting the eas calibrated on the Borrego. I have blocks, and did a calibration last month.
After a few minor tweaks, I got it spot on! Perfect at all 4 corners.Then, a week later after just being parked in the shed, it wasn't anymore.
Now the left side comes radically up, and Rt side goes down in about the same proportion.
I just calibrated again, with blocks.Here is what I get after calibration:
Extended:
FL Target: 130 FL Actual 146
FR Target 134 FR Actual 125
RL Target 126 RL Actual 145
RR Target 123 RR Actual 102

Standard:
FL Target 107 FL Actual 119
FR Target 109 FR Actual 97
RL Target 107 RL Actual 123
RR Target 104 RR Actual 87

Highway:
FL Target 89 FL Actual 96
FR Target 91 FR Actual 79
RL Target 96 RL Actual 94
RR Target 92 RR Actual 70

These numbers are consistent +/- a couple of points when input into 3 different EAS ECUs
All 3 ECUs exhibit the same behaviour when the observed values for calibration are saved into them.
I have confirmed all 4 sensors are in good shape and plugs are clean.
I have cleaned and re tightened the ground points related to EAS on LF fender.
I have cleaned the plug and mating sockets of all 3 EAS controllers
I have 4 new Dunlop bags.
I have replaced, then did a left right swap of the rear sensors. No difference
The plug in the RH kick panel is clean (Hmm, Better go check the left side...)

As a new bonus feature, it now also levels itself after shutting it off and closing the door.....
It goes straight to access height!
Over the years, I have had various P-38s occasionally but rarely come up with one side MUCH higher after they had sat for several months and EAS had leaked down. Cycling the EAS up and down, or driving them always cleared things up.

SOLVED: It was a bad driver pack. It was not operating the RR valve even though the EAS ECU was sending the 12v signal, so basically the 3 other corners were dragging it along. Found it by operating the valves with Nano and listening carefully. RR would operate about 1% of the time when commanded to open.
Replaced with one from the parts cupboard, and it is now riding precisely where it is programmed to.
Very strange set of symptoms for a pretty simple problem. I now have a solid EAS!
Now for the Air Con slow leak......

First electrical issue after 16k miles. Started the car and EAS fault arrived.

Right side is low, but the left is fine. Seems a hard fault. I remember using the EAS Unlock Suite. Is this cable fine?
https://ebay.io/m/ylaAXK

Let’s hope.
As I was about to type the above, I started the car and voila - error gone and the right side adjusted itself.

Now, when I first bought the car, it would end up on bump stops each time. To mitigate this, I park the vehicle at off-roading height, which has worked well for the last 16 months.

What’s the first step? Cable and software?

Just looking for a new key fob pad. Searching on eBay single pads are now £10.99 yet you can buy a complete replacement shell and pad for £5.99? Anyone know of where I can get just the buttons for less?