KCR wrote:

Bolt wrote:

Possibly the two ugliest words in the P38 lexicon:
Ball Joints.
Finally got psyched up enough to tackle these on Bolt.
Middling decent hand tools loaned by the local O'Reilly's auto parts shop.
Actually, the job was not as bad as I thought it would be.
4 hours for the first set an a bit over 2 for the second ones.
I would like to know what the proper press cup looks like for the bottom one?
Had to use a cut off wheel on the grinder to cut off the flange on the bottom of the lower to allow it to be
pressed out.
The first set only lasted 215k miles! (How many sets have you been through Gilbert?)
Glad I do all my own work as I imagine the current crop of ham fisted shop apes could really screw up the job!
With any kind of luck I will not have to do them

Sheet of the genuine LR Tool I luckily got, as well as the alignment tool for the

There's a few sites that list the tool & have pictures. Remover/Installer Knuckle Ball Joints LRT54008

KCR wrote:

Bolt wrote:

Possibly the two ugliest words in the P38 lexicon:
Ball Joints.
Finally got psyched up enough to tackle these on Bolt.
Middling decent hand tools loaned by the local O'Reilly's auto parts shop.
Actually, the job was not as bad as I thought it would be.
4 hours for the first set an a bit over 2 for the second ones.
I would like to know what the proper press cup looks like for the bottom one?
Had to use a cut off wheel on the grinder to cut off the flange on the bottom of the lower to allow it to be
pressed out.
The first set only lasted 215k miles! (How many sets have you been through Gilbert?)
Glad I do all my own work as I imagine the current crop of ham fisted shop apes could really screw up the job!
With any kind of luck I will not have to do them

Sheet of the genuine LR Tool I luckily got, as well as the alignment tool for the

There's a few sites that list the tool & have pictures. Remover/Installer Knuckle Ball Joints LRT54008
Price does seem to vary a lot. I used a combo of bits from two generic 4x4 joint tool kits.

At long last the weather has been decent enough to resolve the minor bodywork issues I noted last September!!!

The nick on the offside wing mirror sanded back and, thankfully, didn’t require any filling but I now notice on close inspection a black mark in the paint from the wing mirror of the badly driven ‘white van’ that clashed with mine last year. All sanded back, undercoated, top coated and clear coated.

Minor corroding nick on the front passenger door dealt with. Thankfully the corrosion had not spread at all - these Range Rovers really do resist corrosion incredibly well - just removed the necessary very small bubbling area and noted that it had not penetrated to the metal at all so just required a bit of touch up and polishing.

Front offside bumper lower finisher required a bit of sanding back to plastic, undercoating, top coating and clear coating.

Minor scratch on rear bumper was only in the clear coat so just required a quick fill with top coat and sanding and quick spray of clear coat.

However, having had significant repair work on the rear arches it was apparent that some other less than careful parking motorist had opened their door onto the offside rear wheel arch. It obviously just touched as there was not dent but they managed to scrape about half inch of clear coat and top coat off. This required some light filling, sanding, undercoating, top coating and clear coating plus blending into the surrounding paintwork.

That completed the body work which is now all looking remarkably good for a 25 year old motor.

Finally, whilst replacing the rear brake pads I treated Rangie to a new pair of rear mudflaps which were beginning to look a little tired.

So, all now prepared for the holidaying season!

A few days ago we drove back from south of Biarritz in the Basque Country right on the Spanish border to Brittany. It was almost exactly 500 miles (800km) & took a leisurely eight hours with stops for food, fuel & shopping. We were cruising on the autoroute at 130kph/80mph for most of the time. I detoured from the motorway so I could fill up with E85 at 73c per litre. At the motorway services E85 was 88p per litre still a considerable saving over E10 at €2.20 per litre.

There was one unscheduled stop when I got an EAS FAULT which the Nanocom told me was an Invalid fault code. I cleared it & we went on our way. Funnily enough the last time this happened was almost exactly a year ago when driving to the South of France. Almost certainly just a glitch from a height sensor that caused the EAS ECU to lose its marbles & throw a fault. It probably means that the error handling in the ECU code is handled poorly rather like the intermittent ABS FAULT that I have had recently which oddly enough has not occurred since I cleared the EAS FAULT.

I just remembered that the other P38 news from me is that it just turned over 200,000 miles. Nowhere near Richard's 500,000+ but still decent high mileage. It's 30,000 since I had the engine completely reconditioned by V8 Developments & it's been running beautifully. I have a list of minor problems that need attending to (crackles from left hand door speaker, squeaky rear windscreen wiper, sticky driver's door handle, wet passenger carpet, broken glovebox hydraulic strut etc etc) not to mention the many & various scratches & paint scrapes that are just cosmetic but I am confident I can rely on it. Stating this has probably jinxed it so it will have a catastrophic failure next time I drive it but I really think that the reconditioned engine & the other maintenance over the years on EAS etc mean that it is now as reliable as it has ever been.

I had an EAS Fault but only on the billiard table smooth French roads. A small dead spot on one of the front height sensors which, if it sat at that position for more than 2 or 3 minutes, it flagged the error. In the UK it is constantly bouncing from one pothole to another so never stays in the same spot for long enough.

A rare case of "UK roads benefitted my car"

Not really, masking a fault that you only find out about when you cross the Channel and drive on decent roads.

My local garages certainly believe masking a fault is as good as fixing it. Whilst I know it isn't, I don't want to think about how long one abs sensor had a cable tie keeping the cable in a position where the loom/connections were happy.