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.

changed the leak off pipes on the DSE and changed the oil.

Put one of the two new rear air bags on, probably need to do the valve block O rings too.

Steam gennied the engine bay, removing lots of oily crud that I got all over myself changing the starter motor. This is in preparation for fitting new oil pump and filter O rings, and a speedysleeve on the crank pulley.

Realised that the belt tensioner is on the way out. The dash lamps seem to be flickering bright and dim although surprisingly steadily, and the tensioner is twitching which makes me wonder if it's sticking occasionally. Listening with a big long screwdriver the bearing is making a hell of a noise!

I suffered the bright and dim lights, all of them, including the headlights. That was cured by replacing the regulator in the alternator.

I changed my front wheel bearing. I had a full set of hubs and half shafts but supplied the RH front to Nigelbb so when my RH front started groaning, I no longer had a spare. Having a look at what is available, I could get a cheap bearing only for £57 or a Timken for £132. However, that would have involved taking the hub off and taking it to my mates workshop and hoping his 30 tonne press would have been able to shift the old one and he wasn't convinced it would having tried to do one on his own RR Sport. Alternatively, I could buy a complete hub with bearing, but that would have been £297 for a Chinese made Britpart or £500 for an OEM (made in France) with a Timken brearing. However, searching on eBay and I found a Blue-Print branded hub unit for £139. Hmm, is it made of chocolate? It has a 2 year or 50,000 mile warranty but I wasn't sure. Asked my mate what he thought of Blue-Print parts and he told me he regularly uses them on customers cars and Blue-Print is a division of Bilstein so all made in Germany. So I ordered one.

Sure enough, made in Germany with a Timken bearing (for £7 more than a Timken bearing on its own!). Managed to get the old hub out, admittedly having to resort to a sledge hammer (although the ABS sensor came out easily surprisingly), and offered up the new hub only to find that the shield with a hole in it for the ABS sensor wasn't in the right place, so the sensor wouldn't be able to go in. A few years ago I changed a front hub for someone else and he supplied me with a Britpart to fit. That was the same but the shield could easily be rotated to get it right. Could this one? Not a chance. Eventually managed to get it off, and had 4 goes before I got it in the exact right place so the hole lined up with the hole for the sensor. Once that was done, cleaned up everything else and put it back together. Did the hub nut up to what I guestimated to be 200 ft/lbs with the same 5 foot breaker bar I'd used to undo it, and took it out to try it. Although the old one was only really noticeable when turning left, it had obviously been making a noise for a long time as it even seems quieter all the time.

Yesterdays plan to, finally, fit my nicely refurbed and powder coated rear brake shields having fallen apart due to corroded heads on the caliper bolts I resolved to do something really easy off the round-tu-it list today.

The wheels seem to get heavier and heavier as the years go by so figured it was way past time I made a fitting pin to easily locate and support the wheel when installing.

Dug out the mullered locking wheel nut I'd been saving for over a decade for the job. Fired up the P&W and turned the business end down to go through the holes in the wheel and reduced the locking bit to 3/4`' diameter so it was round. Made a 3" extension with an inch or so of 1/2" diameter stub protecting at one end to force into the thread helping ensured alignment when pressed together. Welded the join, trimmed it all up round and straight at 0.72" diameter with a nice taper up to the large end. Just to be swanky I took the outer end down a bit for about 3/4" and did a nice knurl with plain rings each side. Tomorrow I shall dig out the gas torch, take it up to just under red hot and dunk it in oil to black it.

Perhaps I'll do another one to keep in the car. Only an hour and bit of work after all, be quicker second time round. Still got four locking nuts hanging around.

Clive

That sounds interesting. I don't suppose you could post a picture? I also feel that the wheels get heavier every year.

Today? Loads of stuff but not on mine. Currently in France dealing with a P38 with multiple problems. Horrendous battery drain, an intermittent instrument cluster (only works in dry weather), unable to sync the keyfobs and a diesel leak.

Decided I'd start with what I consider the easy ones. We'd already identified that the battery drain only happens when the car is parked in its normal parking place and only if the keyfob receiver is connected. If it is unplugged (completely, not just the blue wire), the battery drain is better but still not good. So the first thing I did was pull out a toy I bought myself, a portable spectrum analyser, and this is what I found.....

For those that don't understand what it shows, the yellow trace is live and shows a constant radio signal just below the frequency where the keybob operates. The green trace is a max hold so any instantaneous signals are shown by that. Just above the constant signal is a small one that popped up while I was checking, but the taller one shown on the green trace is the signal from the keyfob. So the inability to sync the fobs and the battery drain when the receiver is connected are caused by the constant one. The constant signal being there keeps the BeCM awake and I was measuring around 1.4A draw from the battery. Back in the old days when I was still working my next step would be to trace where it is coming from and get it switched off. Unfortunately I no longer have the authority to do that, particularly outside the UK.

Fitted one of Marty's fob fix filters and that did what it says it should and allowed the BeCM to go to sleep. But I still had around 0.5A being drawn from the battery.....

Went through the checks in the BeCM SID and still had 0.5A draw. As there had been problems with the instruments, unplugged them and the draw disappeared and it dropped down to 0.012A (12mA). Took the instrument cluster out and opened it up expecting to find corrosion but it looked perfect, no corrosion, nothing burnt. Put it back in and found, after the BeCM had gone to sleep again, it was back up to drawing 0.5A. then realised something. As the battery had been disconnected to stop it going flat, none of the windows were set. It was giving the message that they weren't set but there was no beeps coming from the dash. Unplugged the little speaker on the back of the cluster (with the drivers door latch tripped so it didn't detect that the door was open) and the draw immediately dropped down to 0.012A, the 12mA I had seen with the complete cluster disconnected. Checked the speaker and it was fine but with it connected, the battery drain came back. So, in consultation with the owner, decided to leave it unplugged. She also mentioned that when the dash wasn't working there was a whining noise coming from behind the dash that altered in frequency with engine revs. So it appears that something in the speaker driver circuitry is playing up but without a spare diesel instrument cluster to put in, we'll leave it as it is.

Then had a little break as it started to rain and I had noticed the HEVAC display was only showing about 3 segments. I had a couple of zebra strips in my box of P38 electrical bits, so took the HEVAC out, took it inside while it was raining and did that.

Then came the bit I wasn't looking forward to, the diesel leak. The collective wisdom of this pub had said it was most likely the leak off pipes but could be the top cover on the fuel pump. So I'd taken leak off pipe with me but after liberally spraying everything with brake cleaner to get it clean and dry, started the engine and watched as it started to leak from the top cover joint. Bugger. I don't do diesels and know very little about them but it turns out that once the inlet manifold is off, getting to the pump is reasonably simple. There's a strange headed bolt and 3 Torx headed ones but a 8mm Irwin socket took care of that. It has a seal like an O ring but not round, that had presumably lost its elasticity so wasn't sealing so I put a very thin smear of my preferred Reinzosil on it and bolted it all back together. After everything was back where it should be, I started the engine and no more diesel leak. I'd call that a result and a lot cheaper than the 2,000 Euro plus labour for fitting it the owner had been quoted for a new pump.

All that is left to do now is drive it away from this spurious radio signal and sync the fobs, but that can wait until tomorrow, there's food and copious quantities of red wine about to be served.

glad you got the disel leak sorted
hopefully get the drain sorted out and the keys synced

Well the howly noise from the back end is gone and it's all back together but I've got this bit left over.

Any idea?

So long as you had another to put in its place, stick it on eBay, someone would buy it..... Did you put another 4 pin diff in or go with a 2 pin in the end?

Going back to the diesel thing I worked on last week, I remember seeing various posts suggesting people check a hose somewhere when a diesel is down on power. When I took the inlet manifold off to get to the fuel pump, I noticed a hose going from the underside of the manifold to a 'thing' next to the fuel filter. That was split at both ends so I chopped the split bits off and refitted it when putting it all back together. When the owner took it out for a test drive, she commented that it had more power when slogging up the steep hill out of her village. When I took it out, I realised just how gutless the diesel version is but she thought it was much better. I hate to imagine what it was like before.

In the end I bought a 2-pin diff and fitted it. I kind of wish I'd also done the oil seals but having removed the old rusty hub bolts it would be fairly easy to get at it again.

I used one of those "flower cookie cutter" bolt extractors with the pointy milled bits that taper in to pull the bolts out and they came out remarkably easily. It's the first time I've used those and I wish I'd bought them years ago, they'd have saved so much bother.

It wasn't too horrible even doing it on the (fairly quiet) road outside my house, although it did of course totally piss down while I went inside to have a cup of tea to steel my nerves for lifting the damn thing back in so I got soaked when I went back out, but it needed to be back together for tomorrow morning.