Richards' white P38 looks very well considering the mileage. Keep it going there, Patsy !!!!

I am pleased with myself for doing a necessary job, this afternoon, while the weather was pretty fair. I replaced the idler wheels, the belt tensioner, and fitted a new fan belt. Now the old thing no longer squeaks, squeals, or rattles when it starts up and goes to tick over, it's now nice and quiet. I did find that the lower bolt connection on the tensioner was actually worn and it was loose. So I would think that the belt wasn't being held as tight as it should have been. Anyway, it's happy with itself now.

Just a leak from the roof somewhere to sort out. My guess would be the roof rail runners, as the leak appeared after leaving the car parked, front down, and slightly tilted over to the passenger side. It doesn't seemed to have happened when being driven as it hadn't been driven for over a month and there wasn't any sign of dampness before last week. Oh well, hey-ho, get the wellies out !!!

Pierre3.

One to go, more to come! :-)

Me, after an irritating trembling, I found time to log the nano and verify what it is happening (I am using the car little lately for a number of reasons). Since it was pointing "multiple misfires" in cyl7, I've replaced the spark plugs (Bosch with 36k km) and since then the issue is gone. Chapeau!
Now it remained some other stuff, but I will post it separately ...

I have just retired so it's a bit of a cliche but we have bought a caravan which I collected yesterday. My wife is very happy that finally the P38 is going to earn its living. I used to tow my Dad's caravan with his Datsun about forty years ago & I have regularly towed trailers & a horse box but the last time was over 25 years ago. It's a big van that looks twice the size of my Dad's old one. It's about 1500kg loaded & the P38 towed it easily. Two tons of steel stops the tail wagging the dog & the 4.6L V8 pulls it easily. You are aware that you have the van on the back but it still accelerates nicely. I only had to drive it for about 30 minutes on the A14 & A12 but it felt pretty comfortable. I recalled Richard's recommendation for towing & put in sport mode. We have to keep it at a caravan storage place as we have no room at home but it's only a 30 minute drive just off the A12. We plan on going away fro a couple of nights at the weekend.

Great!! Enjoy!!
Also, do not be afraid to use the selector to go up an down the gears, at least me I noticed the vehicle responds much better when I 'lock' a specific gear in some situations, instead of letting the gearbox wonder about what to do.

The irritating trembling is back, probably it never left, but in some specific circumstances. I will dig in the topics and get back.

That's why I always use Sport mode. In normal Drive when towing uphill your speed will drop but giving it more throttle will cause the gearbox to change down but will then change back up again as soon as you lift off a touch. If you kickdown in Sport it will hang on to the lower gear and give more revs for much longer.

A couple of little electrical jobs. Earlier in the week I switched my headlights on, the dash beeped and told me the LH Dip Beam bulb had failed. As it is a legal requirement in Europe I'd got a set of spare bulbs in the boot, so fitted a new . Two days later I switched the headlights on, the dash beeped and told me the RH Dip Beam bulb had failed. Picked up a pair of Osram Nightbreaker Ultimate 200 bulbs so fitted both of those and put the spare back in its box.

Just occasionally, I'd been getting another beep from the dash, this time it said Key Battery Low but now it was becoming more regular so I picked up a pair of Varta CR2025 batteries to put in it. Now, as we all know, or should know, if the batteries are replaced within 30 seconds it will keep the programming so not need to be re-syned. Yeah right. Dirt around the battery compartment meant it took me the best part of 30 minutes to get the battery compartment out! Old ones out, new ones in and put it back together. Of course by then sync had been well and truly lost so decided this might be a good idea to see if the EKA could be entered with the key rather than cheating and keying it in from the Nanocom. Despite the key not having been used for many months, if not years, EKA went in first time, doors all unlocked, engine started so synced the fob and all back to normal. So my door latch microswitches are good too....

Water leaking under driver side dash and, sure enough, the pollen filter on that side was wet . . . again! Removed and dried out the filter as well as the housing and checked the cover gasket which all looked good. Reassembled carefully checking positioning of the cover gasket but the next bout of rain proved the leak was still ongoing. Completely sealing off the cover with tape made no difference.

Removed all the plenum covers but all looked good underneath and could see no obvious source for the leak. The plenum seemed to drain OK without any leak into the pollen filter housing. Removed all the plastic captive screw screw 'nuts' but they all looked OK although on some of them the rubber seal had detriorated but replaced them with new anyway as well as new screws using a (belt and braces) touch of RTV sealer on each 'nut'. Checked the bolts across the top of the filter housing and all were tight apart from the middle one of the three . . . on both sides! Ran a bead of sealer around the edge of the housing upper plate, even though the gasket all looked OK, and nipped up the 'loose' bolts (they took an extra eighth to quarter turn).

Reassembled the plenum covers, pollen filters and filter covers and . . . success! Still mystified as to where it leaked and which action solved the problem but it's all tickety-boo now . . . until next time of course!

Back in August, when changing the rear diff oil, I noticed considerable sludge build up on the drain plug so investigated an Ashcroft replacement. The diff also whines on the over-run and during the recent brake dust/mud shield replacement when I had to withdraw the half shaft I noticed the off side half shaft splines had a build up of sludge on them. Better get that diff changed!

Standard 4 pin replacement diff ordered from Ashcroft and arrived a few days later. Just finished swapping it over and having removed all the brake, hub and drive shaft bolts recently disassembly was pretty straight forward, even the diff bolts came out easily after a good wire brushing to remove 23 years of corrosion and crud.

With a good ‘wiggle’ the RTV sealant let go and it was fairly easy to pull the diff out and onto a waiting trolley jack. Balancing the diff on the jack was easier than I anticipated. With the diff withdrawn to the end of the studs the head of the jack could be positioned below the diff locating ring, weight taken and then just rolled the jack back. I found with one hand on the top of the diff with fingers inside the diff grasping the locating ring the whole assembly was easy to balance and once completely free the jack could be lowered and the diff rolled carefully off the jack.

Reassembly was a reverse of disassembly the most difficult job was rolling the replacement diff up onto the trolley jack head. Once, there it could be rotated easily to get it into the correct(ish) orientation balanced, raised up, jack rolled forward and the diff entered the axle housing easily and when the locating ring was butted against the studs a slight jack adjustment for height, diff rotation to fully line up the holes, push and wiggle and she slid home off the jack head.

The most time consuming activity in all this was removing all the old RTV sealant off the axle housing!

Test drive revealed all good and diff whine eradicated.

Island 4x4 have genuine Land Rover oil filters part number ERR3340 for just £6.49+VAT (£7.78) which is less than half the price elsewhere. I just bought a couple of them as the shipping cost is the same for one or two. Total cost for the two including shipping was £22.78. Rimmers have genuine oil filters for £21.24 each plus shipping.

I've always used Mahle (OC261) from my local motor factors at around the same price as the genuine ones.

Rimmer show the OC261 filter as OEM and only £5.10 inc VAT!

Opie Oils sent me Mahle filters the last couple of times.

As its 9+ miles to a factor (or, whisper it, Halfrauds) I switched to Opie kits a couple or three services ago as being decent value and more convenient with everything coming in one box. Bit hit'n miss on drain plug washers, but I stock Dowty seals and use them rather than the usual alloy washers so that matters not. They tend to send two boxes of two pollen filters rather than one box of two. So getting overstocked there.

Clive

Clive603 wrote:

Opie Oils sent me Mahle filters the last couple of times.

As its 9+ miles to a factor (or, whisper it, Halfrauds) I switched to Opie kits a couple or three services ago as being decent value and more convenient with everything coming in one box. Bit hit'n miss on drain plug washers, but I stock Dowty seals and use them rather than the usual alloy washers so that matters not. They tend to send two boxes of two pollen filters rather than one box of two. So getting overstocked there.

Clive

I didn't realise that Opie Oils sold service kits. I have bought Valvoline VR1 20w/50 from them previously as they have good value prices. I think that I have enough sump plug washers for my next ten services.

Do you have a link to their service kits? I can't find them on the Opie Oils website. When I enter details of my P38 it lists lots of different oils but no service kit. There is a slick webpage that looks up your registration number to get details of the car but then it lists lots of parts that very clearly aren't for a P38.

Not mine but one a friend bought a couple of weeks ago. It was advertised as a 2000, was registered in March 1999 but is actually a very late 98 model, GEMS (WA VIN number) Vogue SE, or at least that is what the tailgate badge says. Although the registration document shows it has had 9 previous owners, it has only done 79,600 . The MoT history shows that it has been used rarely, some years it had done less than 200 miles between tests. The bodywork and underside are near immaculate, the EAS works perfectly, it drives superbly and the only thing letting it down are multiple marks on the back bumper where someone has been a little inaccurate when hitching up a trailer.

However, the downsides were the book showing on the HEVAC and the centre console not appearing to fit properly to the point where opening the centre glovebox was a two handed job as the window switch panel was sitting higher and further back than it should. It was dropped off with me to see if I could sort it out and what I found was it appeared that one of the previous owners was what could best be described as a bodging gorilla.

To start with, the instrument surround was cracked in half where one of the upper screws go in, so that was taken inside and plastic welded on the inside. The more I started taking apart, the more bodges I found. The panel that has the pushbuttons in should have 5 screws holding it in, there was 1 and that was loose. Checking with the Nanocom and with the instruments out, the distribution blend motor was doing nothing and it also reported a fault on the LH blend motor. While in there I noticed that the heater core temperature sensor was on the lower pipe, and not the upper one that it should be but the pipes didn't look right. Dropped the knee panel on mine to check and realised that someone had done the heater core O rings and got the pipes crossed! Not only that but there were signs that they were leaking slightly too. Fortunately I had a pair of O rings, so started on that. However, there wasn't the tell tale hole cut in the side panel that is the usual shortcut. Instead it appeared that whoever had done it had forced the panel apart to get in there resulting in this....

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I didn't take the screw out on the right side, it wasn't there in the first place!

Cut the shortcut hole in the side panel, changed the O rings for the correct ones and not the oversized ones that were in there and swapped the pipes over so they lined up properly (probably the reason why it was leaking slightly anyway). Then got back to the blend motor problem.

Having used silicone oil on the distribution linkage, it moved nice and smoothly but the blend motor still didn't do anything. Blend motor was checked (only 3 screws holding it together and not 4 as it should have) and, after unplugging it from the HEVAC, it all tested fine but the crimped connectors in the cable showed it had previously been replaced. Cut the crimps out and soldered and heat shrinked the joints but still no movement from the distribution motor. After much head scratching I dug out a spare HEVAC I had, plugged that in and it worked perfectly, no book, no faults and everything did as it should. Turns out the previous bodger had obviously tested the blend motor by putting power to it without unplugging it from the HEVAC and burnt out the driver chip in the HEVAC. As I have done the same in the past on the HEVAC for the Ascot, I had bought some replacement L272M chips so could change it later. So, at that point It had my spare black fronted HEVAC and not the pretty wood fronted one it should have but I confirmed everything worked although there didn't seem to be a lot of air from the blowers. A look at the pollen filters explained that......

That is the drivers filter but the passenger one wasn't much better, so changed them and started putting everything back together. Plastic welded the broken bits, put everything in with the correct number of screws and remade the top mountings for the window switchpack and everything fitted perfectly. Even the switchpack had 4 of the little Torx headed screws missing from the back as these had been used to secure the HEVAC (about the only thing that was secured with the correct number of screws)! I had to find around 10-15 screws to refit everything as it should be.

The same bodger had also been inside the HEVAC and tried to remove the distribution driver chip, with a hammer and chisel by the look of it, so I cannibalised my spare HEVAC by taking the circuit board out of that and fitting it in the original one (and replaced one of the missing illumination lights too).

The owner collected the car last night and phoned me just before I started writing this to say that it looked good by torchlight but in daylight it looks perfect. Everything fits and looks as it should, there's no creaks or rattles coming from behind the dash and everything just works. Another satisfied owner but I wonder what the result would have been had it been bought by someone that just ignored the faults and not taken the time to get me to take care of it and get it back to how it should be.

nigelbb wrote:

Clive603 wrote:

Opie Oils sent me Mahle filters the last couple of times.

As its 9+ miles to a factor (or, whisper it, Halfrauds) I switched to Opie kits a couple or three services ago as being decent value and more convenient with everything coming in one box. Bit hit'n miss on drain plug washers, but I stock Dowty seals and use them rather than the usual alloy washers so that matters not. They tend to send two boxes of two pollen filters rather than one box of two. So getting overstocked there.

Clive

I didn't realise that Opie Oils sold service kits. I have bought Valvoline VR1 20w/50 from them previously as they have good value prices. I think that I have enough sump plug washers for my next ten services.

Do you have a link to their service kits? I can't find them on the Opie Oils website. When I enter details of my P38 it lists lots of different oils but no service kit. There is a slick webpage that looks up your registration number to get details of the car but then it lists lots of parts that very clearly aren't for a P38.

Sorry for delay in replying. Up to eyes in finance crap!

Just had a look at the Opie site and it appears to have changed somewhat since last time I used them, well over a year ago I reckon. Don't really recall exactly what I did that time, maybe I just followed a list of suggestions. Just can't remember exactly.

As you say no ready made service kit listed, you have to build it up from the list of service essentials. I always go in via vehicle details not registration number. As you found out using the registration is a bit hit & miss with some non P38 parts coming up.

Sorry.

Clive

Richard, those bodge jobs are the worst things on older vehicles. At least my LR’s were just neglected when I got them, not bodged.

To be quite honest, I'd rather simply neglected rather than spending far longer sorting out someone else's mess.

But, I've been working on my car today. A couple of years ago my fuel gauge started playing up. Running on LPG all the time and keeping about 1/4 tank of petrol in it as a backup, I'd worn out the sender track at that point. I bought a replacement fuel pump assembly ages ago but hadn't got around to fitting it but at the weekend I got out of the car and could smell petrol. It was dripping off the tank.....

On another car I'd had to replace the steel pipes that run above the tank from the pump to the filter (GEMS has an inline filter, Thor doesn't) as they had rusted through so figured mine had done the same. With the rear of the car on ramps to give me plenty of space underneath, dropping the tank is fairly straightforward except the Jubilee clips on the filler neck and breather hose were seized solid so had to be mangled off. With the tank out there was no way the unions at the pump were going to undo but the pipes coming from the pump were so corroded they just snapped off. Expecting the ring that holds the pump into place I was all ready for it to put up a fight but it came undone by hand. Old pump assembly out and new one in.

Rather than using the union nuts and olives, I used good quality hose (that I also bought ages ago) on the pump, with proper fuel pipe clamps and replaced the rotted steel pipes with 8mm copper microbore central heating tube. Short section of hose, copper tube that can easily be bent to match the run of the original steel pipes and lift the tank back into place. The hardest part was getting enough movement on the tank to reconnect the filler hose, but a bit of rubber grease on it allowed it to slip on easily once it lined up. That left me with the tank back in place and a pair of copper tubes coming from it. Cut the hose to the filter and connected that to the copper and cut the return pipe at a point where it hadn't rusted and used another short length of hose and more clips to join the two together. Result, no more petrol leaks and a fuel gauge that should hopefully read properly.

All is not perfect though. The pump I bought was an Allmakes branded one and it is noisy. It can't be heard inside the car but standing outside the car with the engine running, a clearly audible whine can be heard coming from it. Maybe it will quieten down with use, maybe it will be quieter if I put more petrol in the tank, maybe not, but I've kept the one I took out (original I assume) and may even drop the tank again and do a mix and match job on the pump and fuel gauge sender if it annoys me enough.

Out of curiosity l, does the petrol pump keep running when you’re on LPG, or is it inhibited? If it doesn’t run you’ll almost never hear it.

It runs all the time so the system is kept exercised and the flow of fuel through the fuel rail stops the injectors from overheating. So it simply flows through the fuel rail to the pressure regulator and then back to the tank. To stop it from leaking between noticing the problem and doing something about it, I pulled the petrol pump relay and forced the car to start on LPG. On the very first LPG car I owned (a Saab 900) I completely forgot about that and let the petrol tank run right down, that burnt out the pump as it was running with nothing flowing through it and then ran out of LPG. AA man towed me to the nearest filling station with LPG so I could fill up on that and run on LPG alone until I could put a new pump in.

Good to know. Unfortunately we learn our best lessons the hard way.