Is there a good way to undo the 2 bolts at the bottom of the radiator? The nuts just spin in their plastic housing. Maybe I need to just grind the bolt heads off?

I don’t know about a ‘good way’ Harv, but I struggled with this not so long ago.

I think I did grind the heads off, just to get the thing out of the car, and then I removed the remainder of the bolts and the nuts on the bench. I did then replace them with stainless nuts and bolts on the rebuild.

I think I read elsewhere (maybe on here) that it was quite common to find that the plastic bracket itself was missing - presumably cut off by someone in your position - but that seemed a bit of a bodge, and I think those little bolts do add to the radiator stability.

Thanks Don. I’m working on grinding them off. The original nut appears to be brass, so I’m not sure that stainless would be any better. I think I may use large ty-wraps in place of the bolts.

I cut the bolts with a reciprocating saw which worked fine enough, and got the radiator out. Definitely not Land Rovers best idea to capture the nuts in a plastic bracket in a corrosive environment.

I’d forgotten about them being brass. I think I used a ‘dremel’ with a diamond disc to get in there because of the angles. Often, when I use stainless, I’ll use a proper anti-seize for stainless steel. It also seems to help with corrosion.

On the other hand, maybe I’m hoping not to be back in there for quite some time!

(I keep on wondering about a reciprocating saw - just haven’t got there yet!)

I didn’t destroy anything other than the bolts, so I could still go back to bolts, but I’m going to see how ty-wraps work.

I'll be completely honest, having seen the bottom ripped off a brand new radiator because the holes didn't line up so it was under tension, I've never refitted them. The rad is held in place at the bottom by the pegs and rubber bushes, at the top by the slotty things and gravity. Even if you managed to turn the car upside down, I doubt it would fall out (although the security of the radiator would probably be the least of your worries if the car is upside down).

Thanks Richard. That makes me feel better about using ty-wraps.

I left them out of mine, that was 6 yrs ago and the rads still there I hope 🤣😂

The rad-bolts are the same painful construction, as the headlamp rear ones ;-) it seems it was a fashionable idea amongst LR construction engineers of that time ... guess they never estimated us turning the bolts 20 years after building the car.

But they should have estimated that. By the time they built P38’s it was pretty clear that quite a number of LR vehicles were still in use decades later.

The only thing running through LR's minds were the two words 'warranty period'.

And I'm sure that gave them enough grief as it was.

I love my P38 - its certainly one of a kind with all that has been done to it, and I won't give it up. At the same time, I'd quite like to bludgeon some of the design/accounting team with a blunt instrument.

I'm currently rebuilding a 4.3 Mercruiser boat engine, a V6 that is a marinised version of 3/4 of the 5.7 V8 small block Chevy engine. If you think some of the design features on a P38 are bad, you want to try working on one of those......

I think most of the design features on the LR’s are actually very good. The lower rad attach bolts just aren’t one of them. At least they gave me enough room to get a recip saw at them.

Oh there are some decent decision features for sure. Generally the ones that don't give you problems. But there are a lot of bad ones too that were either just not thought through, or driven by cost cutting.

Steel encapsulated rubber/rubber foam for example - mudflaps that rust from the inside out, the nudge bar, window frames...

I'm going slight on a tangent - I can forgive the radiator mounts because eh, fixings like that are always going to put up a fight after a while. I just highly doubt LR expected some strange breed of people would actually keep these things going 20 years later :)