Does anyone fancy a go at this? It seems that for the price of fitting a new driver's door handle you could have another P38 for £1
(plus the cost of fixing all the other bits they're not telling you about lol)
Someone needs to get one of Psidoc's chipped unlocked ECU units and go plug it in and drive it off.
About a 5 minute job!
I would love to see the look on the seller's face!
Bolt wrote:
Someone needs to get one of Psidoc's chipped unlocked ECU units and go plug it in and drive it off.
About a 5 minute job!
I would love to see the look on the seller's face!
haha that would be ideal!
I'd probably take a set of EAS emergency valves and a couple of bags just in case.
Not even needed. Plug in the Nanocom, enter the EKA and drive it away. I did one recently that didn't even have any keys, all it had was a piece of paper with the EKA written on it. Had it running in 5 minutes......
Does that work on a 97? I thought it was only the later ones...
Hmm, yes I think you are right, on an early one if it is immobilised it won't allow diagnostics to connect. Although it is a December 97 car so will be a 98 model and it should work on that (it does on both my 98's anyway). But even if it won't, the EKA can still be entered by plugging in a good door latch and operating the levers in the correct order. That's how I used to have to do it on the Ascot in winter when the keyswitch wouldn't work until I replaced the door latch.
However, I forwarded it to Phil (Holland and Holland) who buys them to restore or break depending on the state of them, in case he was interested. He reckons it has been up for sale for months now, originally at silly money for what it is. We both agree that it is a £500 car at best but the seller is asking for offers and he thinks it is worth far more than that.
The door latch or Nano and EKA tricks might work, but I am assuming that this one has been annoyed until it has gone into what I think of as "Secondary lockdown"" The only way out of that is for the BECM to take a trip to someone with full BBS setup or testbook for unlocking.....$$$$$$
OR the Psidoc solution is quicker, cheaper, and foolproof. (and forever)
NO I do not work for, or in any way receive compensation from Simon.
I just love his product and want to keep as many P-38s out of the breakers yard due to immobilisation issues as possible.
I dont think its actually a quid, hes got "open to offers" in the description.
Apparently, he's had it listed previously for over 2 grand, so now he is open to offers. I doubt he would accept a sensible one though, he thinks it is worth more than it is. If you look at the MoT history it's had quite a few advisories for rust on the bodyshell in the past.
@Bolt, Any P38 in the UK with immobilisation issues won't end up in the breakers unless that is all they are worthy of but rather than being in a breakers yard they will be bought by someone that will break them and sell off the parts, a P38 will fetch around £3k as a pile of saleable parts. Worst case, a locked out BeCM can be unlocked for around £100. With Simon's mod, what happens if a car is immobilised? I know it will still start and run but do you end up with a dash that tells you it is immobilised?
Granted, this site is blessedly "Brit-Centric" in nature, however there are still a lot of owners all over the world, including, YES! here in the former colony AKA the USA.
Tragically, here, I have seen over a hundred very nice, mostly under 150k miles (I have had great luck in jumping in a small battery and reading the Becm for mileage) clean examples in breakers yards with unknown issues.
No way to know what the final straw was with most of them, but due to the lack of real mechanics over here who are willing to even look at one of "Those things" and the sad fact that there is no shortage of unethical charlatans who are perfectly willing to take enormous sums of money to fix something, only to get it wrong, at best and make things worse usually.
As with everywhere I am aware of, the old skilled trained experienced guys are getting pretty thin on the ground.
I suspect most of them on your side of the ditch are on this forum!
So, to answer your question:
I have tested this with all 3 of my P-38s, and if I intentionally immobilise the BECM I can immediately start the vehicle, and, strangely, there are no messages in the console, and everything works as usual.
The only indication that appears is the red led on the dash will be flashing to indicate it thinks the alarm is on.
Having disconnected the alarm horn long ago, I don't know that it would not be bleating like Shaun the Sheep!
So, if the S-chip is a method of keeping people from getting immobilised due to their lack of knowledge of the proper maintenance procedures for the locking system, then I say, sell one to everyone who has had immobiliser issues!
Remember, they may be capable of learning to fix things in time if they don't get so pissed off and disgusted that they torch, or trash a perfectly serviceable vehicle. The fact that they ask questions (Over and over again) about issues they are having shows at least a willingness to give it a go.
Who has the sign off: "Land Rover, making mechanics out of drivers since 1945"
Never were more true words spoken!
Stepping down from soap box now......
I think the situation in Canada (at least where I live) is even worse. In the last year I have only seen 2 other P38’s, and neither of them were driving. Nor is there a breaker within a couple of hundred miles of me that’s had one in years.
Bolt wrote:
Granted, this site is blessedly "Brit-Centric" in nature, however there are still a lot of owners all over the world, including, YES! here in the former colony AKA the USA.
That was how this site came about, as an antidote to the US bias on rr.net. Admittedly, It did involve Gordon and I sitting in a pub in Glasgow in 2014 and coming up with the idea after quite a lot of beer when both of us had recently been banned by RRTH for posting the tagline on this site
No way to know what the final straw was with most of them, but due to the lack of real mechanics over here who are willing to even look at one of "Those things" and the sad fact that there is no shortage of unethical charlatans who are perfectly willing to take enormous sums of money to fix something, only to get it wrong, at best and make things worse usually.
As with everywhere I am aware of, the old skilled trained experienced guys are getting pretty thin on the ground.
There is a lack of real mechanics everywhere as the older ones retire and the younger ones don't have the experience or correct mindset to work out what a problem is without a computer that tells them what part to replace. They are skilled (semi-skilled?) parts fitters, not mechanics. Last week I was asked to look at a Ford Granada that has been fitted with a Rover V8 of unknown origin which was running really rough. The owner's son was helping me and he works for a Jaguar independent workshop. From the 35D engine number I could see it was a 3.9, EFi from a manual 88-94 Classic or Discovery. The EFi has been removed and an Edelbrock manifold and carb fitted. The problem was that only 4 of the HT leads were in the right place on the distributor cap and the timing was way out. The son has only ever worked on an engine with coil on plug coil packs and had no idea how to adjust the ignition timing, a distributor was completely alien to him.
The only indication that appears is the red led on the dash will be flashing to indicate it thinks the alarm is on.
Having disconnected the alarm horn long ago, I don't know that it would not be bleating like Shaun the Sheep!
If the alarm is triggered as well as the horn it would usually switch on the hazard lights too, so if it isn't flashing at you, then the only thing still working is the LED. As I have no idea how Simon's chip works, I'm not sure how that works. Under normal circumstamces, when you unlock the car the BeCM turns off the alarm and sends a code to the ECM to enable it. As far as I know, there is no 'handshake' back to the BeCM, it blindly sends the code. On a GEMS you can unlock the car so the alarm is turned off, the code is sent and you don't get an immobilised message, even if the engine ECU is unplugged. The BeCM is happy and has done its bit so will even allow the starter to turn the engine over (the starter is disabled on a GEMS if immobilised). So quite why you don't still get the Immobilised message on the dash and the alarm doesn't get triggered, I have no idea.
So, if the S-chip is a method of keeping people from getting immobilised due to their lack of knowledge of the proper maintenance procedures for the locking system, then I say, sell one to everyone who has had immobiliser issues!
And there you've nailed it, proper maintenance. I won't drive my car if something either doesn't work or it feels or sounds different until I have investigated and fixed whatever is causing the problem (except in the case of the seat heaters, I've fixed them once but as I keep sitting on the seats, I've broken the elements again and, as I have cloth seats, don't really need them). So when someone says they've been locked out and then casually mention that the locks have been dancing for years now and they've done nothing about it, I feel like telling them it is their fault then. It's been telling them something isn't right but they ignored it, so now it is punishing them for their neglect.
Who has the sign off: "Land Rover, making mechanics out of drivers since 1945"
Johnno, an Aussie on rr.net. It's actually since 1948 but I think it is more from the point of view of mechanical issues, for the P38 owner it should be, "The P38, making electrical, electronic and pneumatic engineers out of owners since 1994"