Well I finally graduated to become a fully fledged P38 owner today. I have undergone the right of passage and got a lift home on the back of a flat-bed!
The cause of this was a failed accessories drive belt. The very belt that I replaced as a preventative measure when I first got the vehicle whilst I had the radiator out barely two months ago!
All effected pulleys and accessories have been checked and are free to rotate. Alignment looks to be correct too.
Joy!
Congratulations!
It's that unreliable BMW engine y'see....
I know we shouldn't laugh, but I did, sorry. Seems odd that the belt went. I've known them to get thrown off if a pulley bearing goes but I've never known one break. Not even ones that are so perished the ribs are falling off......
It'll be that 'cheap' £30 belt from Halfords. Maybe I should try the £7 britpart one next...
I didn't take a photo of it but there didn't appear to be much of it left, just one tangled rib. Saying that the rest could be a tangled mess hiding beneath the fan shroud.
I use Dayco on both of mine- haven't had a problem (with belts anyway) yet.
Have you checked belt tensioner for alignment and full and free movement?
On a previous diesel P38 I had a relatively new Land Rover belt let go.
Not really sure what the cause of the failure was but it seemed like all of the ribs separated from each other and wrapped themselves (extremely tightly!) around the fan and a couple of the pulleys. Cutting that mess out wasn't fun.
When my dse belt went, it did exactly the same. Shredded into spaghetti strands and wrapped itself round every pulley it could find. No reason for it to go, but hey, it's a p38 !
and for a bit of role reversal
That's the Duchess towing my Jeep! The guys in the garage had a good chuckle about a P38 being the one at the front of the rope. I'm not sure if I was offended or not!
Ah well. The Jeep suffered a sudden and rather dramatic loss of ATF which I'm hoping is just one of the trans cooler lines letting go.
That's pretty impressive- a P38 on a Wall of Death is pretty exciting, but towing at the same time? Wow!
Yeah the roadholding is great!
The forum doesn't seem to like portrait shots, and autorotated that one.
Don't you know that in the extremely unlikely event of your P38 sitting down on it's ass at the side of the road, you are supposed to drop the tailgate, break out the hamper and sample some of Fortnum's finest fare, whilst commenting loudly that you've never seen better spot for a picnic.
Otherwise, common people start to talk uncouthly about unreliability.
Resized it to 600x1067 px for you, maybe the forum doesn't like over 1800 px wide pics.
And corrected it so that they're driving on the right side of the road (for you) as well. Clever stuff Tony :)
But I realize that I'm spoiling a gag now...