My name is Pete. I live in the BVI (British Virgin Islands) and bought in 2014 a 2001 4.6 Vogue from Japan so RHD in pretty much mint condition except she came with coils springs.After much reading I converted back to EAS which is problematic but great.
Sadly she is a bit of an island car now having been through the storms of 2017 here which smashed a rear window (replacement from Latvia). I have replaced both head gaskets water pump, radiator hoses skimmed heads etc. to keep her cool and she doesn't use coolant anymore. All the brakes discs and calipers, fuse box holder, etc. etc. list is numerous..Love the car but what a challenge.
However I have lost RAVE on a dead tablet so I am looking for suggestions. I should have changed the camshaft and timing chain when I did the head even though she has only done 90k kms.
Hi Pete and welcome. Easy one first, RAVE, and various other useful stuff, can be downloaded from this forum, see https://rangerovers.pub/topic/10-how-do-i-mend-it.
My original timing chain lasted 287,000 miles so don't worry about it too much and camshaft wear seems not to be as common as some people make out. EAS is fairly simple once you get your head around it, you just need to deal with any dropping when parked or slow to rise when it should as soon as you notice it.
Interesting about the Jap import, I work on a lot of Jap imports (usually Jap made cars like Nissans etc), it didn't occur to me before but have any other P38 fans considered importing a P38 from Japan? Jap imports are usually in great condition for the age.
Welcome Pete.
The main advantage with Jap imports is usually low mileage and no rust. Thing is, with a P38 there are quite a few around in good condition with low mileage which isn't always a good thing in my view as there are plenty of things that suffer with age rather than mileage and, unless it has lived near the sea or been abused, a P38 doesn't usually rust anyway. Downsides are the couple of companies that import them ask top whack prices for cars with a speedo in kilometres, a radio that tunes the wrong part of the band and probably other minor differences too (RAVE mentions a lambda amplifier that was only fitted to Japanese spec cars for instance). Buying an import if it is something that is not available in the UK or so different to a UK spec car I can see the sense in but I don't feel the differences on a P38 justify the prices they fetch.
However, as Pete has one it would be interesting to hear his view and why he went for one.
There's a company near me that seems to start at about £8k for Japanese P38. A friend of mine bought one but chopped it in after a year because it "kept breaking down". From the (rather terse) description it was just a few EAS faults that anyone on here could have sorted but I suspect the importers know more about Japan than P38s. Just my suspicion.
I see a company, near York I think, called Specialist Cars who always seem to have quite a number of low mileage Japanese import P38's. And they all seem to be on sale for around £6 -£7000.
I had two really nice Japanese imported Isuzu Troopers, long wheel base, back about 20 years ago, and they were fantastic spec. compared to a home grown model. The main issues were having to change the radio, as the Japanese radio don't really pick up much here, they had the speedometer in km's, and lastly, they use an exhaust recycling system which caused running issues using European diesel. I remember blanking a pipe from the exhaust manifold to, I think, the inlet manifold.
If you didn't blank off the recycling pipe you would get large clouds of black exhaust smoke when accelerating.
Pierre3
Those are the guys.