Thanks, I'll try taking the wind deflector off initially which may well be the answer as the passenger wiper, with the wind deflector, doesn't judder. Not sure how clean the screen will be after wiping it with brake fluid.....

Got home just under 2 hours ago. Trip computer says 2,712 miles at an average speed of 49 mph. That works out to 55 hours, 21 minutes driving time between 04:30 on Sunday and today. When you take into consideration that I spent a total 18 hours on ferries and a further 18 hours waiting for ferries (was booked on a 15:10 ferry from Rostock but got there early enough to get on the 07:30 which was fully booked so had to wait), that's 91 and a half hours accounted for out of the 129 hours I've been away.

However, other than using about half a litre of oil (and the juddering wipers), the P38 performed faultlessly as usual but I do foresee a gearbox out to change the rear oil seal coming up......

Hi guys, sorry is been a long time but I have been drowned ....

The good news is that, after little over three years (countless wasted time), and after getting rid of my "alternative transport", I got my Queen back on the road, albeit incomplete, but hope will be a permanent condition from now on! :-)

I got lots to tell and will update so in my own post somewhere down the pages ...

Wiper blades: considering the prices of these nowadays, I just consider them a easy consumable and switch between Bosch, Valeo and Champion, with a preference for the first two. Basically I wait until they are in offer - watch them in main supermarkets as well, not auto shops - and stock up. After an year or so .... replace.
We are talking the normal metal framed ones, not the new fangled silicon blade which looks hideous on an older car.

It obviously pays to have the glass very clean and de-greased of all organic matter (dead bugs and such), thing that most rarely do ....

Tried taking the wind deflector off and it seems to have made a difference but not really had enough rain to confirm. Although it has only been on there for about 5 months, the drivers wiper blade looks like it might need replacing anyway so I'll get a new Bosch one and not fit the wind deflector.

StrangeRover wrote:

PIAA make silicone wiper blades, which last a lifetime..

Expensive though.

Thanks for the suggestion. I am tempted to try a pair.

A few months back I fitted a new pair of Michelin blades & like Richard with his Bosch wipers I have noticed that they judder a bit & don't flip over so easily at the end of of the arc of travel.

The PIAA blades are available on-line at just over £61.32 including shipping so are well over double the cost of the Michelin blades from wiperblades.co.uk

https://www.piaa.co.uk/wipers/wipershow.asp?id=1176&make=LAND+ROVER&model=Range+Rover&year=LHD+%2F+RHD+10%2F1994+-+02%2F2002

https://www.demon-tweeks.com/uk/piaa-si-tech-flat-aero-wiper-blades-264697/

While we are on the subject, what are the exact dimensions of the blades you guys are fitting?

Supposed to be 22” for both but I find a 22” on the driver’s side just catches the top windscreen trim so I fit a 21” on that side. For Bosch Aerotwin you need to get the ‘AR’ version not the ‘AP’ version to get the correct fitting - AR22U and AR21U.

Also, for the Bosch Aerotwin the wind deflector is not required because the back of the blade is shaped to perform the same function.

I have used the Aerotwin blades for a good number of years, and I have always found them to be very good. The ones on my car have been on for 18 months so far, and are still working well.

The only car that I have bought [and still buy] proprietary wipers for, is my Lexus IS 300h, because I have tried a couple of different ones from Halfords and despite their listings none of them are correct.

Pierre3.

Garvin wrote:

Supposed to be 22” for both but I find a 22” on the driver’s side just catches the top windscreen trim so I fit a 21” on that side. For Bosch Aerotwin you need to get the ‘AR’ version not the ‘AP’ version to get the correct fitting - AR22U and AR21U.

Also, for the Bosch Aerotwin the wind deflector is not required because the back of the blade is shaped to perform the same function.

I think that I will save the money I would have spent on the PIAA blades & buy a pair of Bosch Aerotwins. I cannot recall now why I bought the Michelins as at the same time I bought Bosch Aerotwins for my other 2 cars. I was probably seduced by some marketing claim.😀

Broke it.......

Had a 70 mile round trip to do today and about 10 miles from home on the way back it suddenly felt like it had developed a slight, uneven, misfire. Switched over from LPG to petrol and no different so figured I might have an ignition coil on the way out. Pulled up at a roundabout and the idle was perfectly smooth. Everything seemed quite normal until the traffic lights changed and I put my foot on the throttle. It pulled away but only just, rev counter leaping between 1,500 and 4,000 rpm and accelerating very slowly. Got round the roundabout and pulled onto the hard shoulder. Plugged in the Nanocom and found it showing Lockup Solenoid Failure for the gearbox. Cleared the fault, restarted the engine, put it in Drive and it pulled away normally. Drove fine for all of 200 yards then started to lose drive again so I got it off the dual carriageway to somewhere I could investigate further. Gearbox fluid level seemed about normal, no fluid pouring out from underneath anywhere, so figured it was time to call the AA.

Man came out, told him the problem and he started the engine. Sitting in the car I hadn't been able to hear it but standing next to it I could hear a metallic, rattling, clattering noise coming from the area of the gearbox. AA man agreed that the gearbox was toast and arranged a recovery truck.

A couple of people have told me that the 4HP22 gearbox fitted to the 4.0 litre petrol and diesel isn't that good and have suggested fitting the stronger 4HP24 from a 4.6. I must admit that with the amount of towing I do I have been considering doing a swap for a while but you know how it is, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Well now it is broke so needs to be fixed and I can confirm that the lifespan of a 4HP22 is 454,185 miles. A quick phone call to Dave Morris at East Coast 4x4 and there's a 4HP24 from a sub-100,000 mile 4.6 on it's way to me, an order to Ashcroft's for a heavy duty flex plate and another to LRDirect for an engine rear main oil seal which I may as well change while I'm under there as it has been leaking about a quarter litre of oil every 1,000 miles for a while now. Car is already up in the air and I'll start stripping it while waiting for the replacement gearbox to arrive. Unfortunately the MoT on the Ascot ran out a month ago so that is booked in for first thing Saturday morning so hopefully I'll be able to use that in the interim.

no doubt you will strip down the trans and give us an account of what's happened. as we would say in Australia , bugger , it's slang for shes fucked.

In the UK it's a technical term spelt phuqued.

From the clattering I suspect the torque converter has broken up internally. It's too much of a 'tinny' sound to be gearbox internals.

Well, my adventure is quite tame then! New rear discs, pads and slide pins to cure a sized caliper, which had resulted in metal to metal on the LH rear disc.

Gilbertd wrote:

In the UK it's a technical term spelt phuqued.

From the clattering I suspect the torque converter has broken up internally. It's too much of a 'tinny' sound to be gearbox internals.

broken flex plate? The 4.6 engine i bought from the wrecker has its flex plate broken into several bits.

I'd add a new trans oil cooler to that list Richard ,don't want any debris from your old gearbox going through your new one,

I thought maybe flex plate but if that was the case it wouldn't drive and pull away almost normally then gradually lose drive over a distance of 100 yards or so. When it was dropped of the recovery truck outside the house I was able to drive it off the road and into the working space. With a flex plate I would expect no drive at all and that wouldn't give a fault code either I wouldn't have thought. I'll pull the cover off the lower part of the flywheel later and have a look.

Good call on the oil cooler, I better get one ordered.

Looking at RAVE it's all pretty straightforward to drop it out other than it being heavy and bulky to manhandle. Fortunately my neighbour is a recently retired workshop manager for Nene Overland, a Land Rover approved independent and I've been told that as long as there is a constant supply of beer, he'll be out there under it with me. What I find amusing is that RAVE tells you to take the crossmember off but only on the diesel, not on the petrol. So how do you drop the gearbox out if the crossmember that runs underneath it is still there?

it Is relatively easy i'm counting the days for mine, seeing as I pulled chunks of one of the clutch baskets out of the filter.

The Gems and thor transmissions differ in length the earlier Gems HP24 is 15mm longer than the latter 065 hp24 as fitted to the thor V8.

I know its a don't teach an old chicken scenario but i'd make sure you have the earlier box to ease any issues come installation time )

Dave checked and I'm getting a box from a 98 GEMS 4.6 that had only done 80k miles so will be a straight swap for mine. The very early, up to around '96 were the longer ones. There's other difference with the Thor box too.

i thought the extra length wasn't an issue as the gearbox is the same length overall. i was lead to beleave the difference was corrected in the bell housing and the complete unit was the same length , is this right .

While I haven't updated the "long project" topic, I can mention I have already clocked up 1000km since returning the thing to life, and I have already suffered a few cases, first two-three were failed started and trouble brought by the LPG valve on the reducer, mostly due to debris (I had also now to change the tank as it "expired"). After two filters and constant bother when hot, I decided directly to replace the valve and be done with it (Romano, around 20 euro and some spanner work).
Since then, all well with the LPG. I want to replace the reducer as well, is got over 120k km and while I used the rebuild kit I feel is past its best.

Last Friday I had the first ever real breakdown in a P38 ... but I will narrate it separately, too much shame!

So far so good. Whacked the Ascot in for MoT and came away without even any advisories so at least I have practical transport for the time being (as I discovered yesterday, a Mercedes SLK280 isn't the ideal vehicle to load all the kit I need to install an AC system into). Got started on pulling bits off mine before rain stopped play. Flex plate isn't broken and still looks perfect from what I can see looking through the inspection hole. Both propshafts are disconnected as is the handbrake cable and the electrical connections. So next step is downpipes and crossmember before I can start on the gearbox itself. New flexplate (Ashcrofts heavy duty one) will be here on Monday, gearbox should be here Wednesday but LRDirect haven't given me an arrival day for the rear main oil seal yet. Bit of a bugger really as I could do with that before everything else. Realised why RAVE doesn't tell you to remove the crossmember on a petrol too. It tells you to remove the exhaust downpipes and refers you to the relevant section, then it says on diesel vehicles only, remove the crossmember. On a petrol it tells you to remove the crossmember in the downpipe removal section but you don't need to if you have a diesel.

One interesting thing that came out of the Ascot MoT though. The V5 shows it to be a Range Rover HSE Auto and there has been a bit of a discussion in the past as a limited edition P38 called the Ascot doesn't seem to exist. The assumption has always been that it is an HSE and someone has put an Ascot badge on it. The badge is very similar, but not exactly the same, to that fitted on a Rover 100 Ascot. However, according to the DVSA record when the VIN is put into their database, it comes back as a Land Rover, Range Rover Ascot SE 4.6L 5 door Auto Estate. So maybe I do have an extremely rare limited edition?