Check wheel balance first. That usually appears at a given speed and goes away if you speed up or slow down. Its simply a resonance between the out of balance wheel and its RPM. Sounds like what you have to me.

Death wobble was common on older landrovers with loose/poorly adjusted swivel bearings. I guess worn balljoints might cause a similar effect. Generally once it starts its really quite scary and the car becomes hard to control, which is not the same as wheel balance causing an annoying vibration. Its also usually triggered differently, rather than just speed it might be set off by a pot hole or similar.

Thanks. Quite a lot to digest there.

The car currently has an H filter. When i got it it had the pair of Y pipes instead. There was a visible puddle of coolant on top of the reducer the other morning after a short run to move it around the driveway, so it really does want fixing. I suspect the coolants evaporating off when running, but the cold run meant it stayed there. The car also seems to use a lot of coolant, it may also be leaking elsewhere, it seems every time i fix a leak a new one appears!

The Romano HD and the Palladio both look decent. I note you mention external solenoids.

The palladio here appears to have an integrated solenoid:

https://www.lpgshop.co.uk/emer-omvl-palladio-350hp-high-power-reducer/

I also note there appears to be two different gas line sizes, 6mm and 8mm. I'll need to measure up, but if its 6mm line does an adaptor exist to allow it to fit the larger inlet?

I dont know what the internal size of the valteks i have is, but i do know i drilled the nozzles out to 2.5mm so hopefully thats fine.

I suspect it might benefit from a tune up by someone who knows what their doing as well. Just now its running the "auto calibrate" map and nothing more. But i guess i'll get the mechanical bits sorted first then go from there!

"specially made" as in he put them in a pillar drill? Come on, its hardly mega fabrication work or hours of machining...

The bigas would be a straight swap, but its a pretty shabby/untidy install and the bigas unit has some quirks that are annoying. Specifically the water inlets are 10mm (most use 16 and as a result my car has a horrible mashup of pipework feeding it), and similarly the gas outlets are 10mm, rather than the typical 11 or 12 which makes things awkward.

I've currently got 12mm barb on the injectors, an 11mm filter, and 10mm outlets on the vapouriser lashed up with 11mm pipe.

Its a prime opportunity to tidy it all up and try to make a neater job of it all!

The coolant just appears on the top of the case. It can only really be leaking from the seam in the unit, theres nothing else up there.

The rebuild kit from Tinley for the Bigas reducer is £40. Given new ones are around £100, i think thats a poor approach, i might as well just replace the vaporiser.

Clearly though, i'd like something decent and dont really know what to go for:

https://www.lpgshop.co.uk/300bhp-and-more-autogas-reducer/

The LPG chap on here (simon i think?) did suggest i might need to bump the vapouriser pressure up a bit when he suggested the Valtek injectors, but thats something i never did as at the time i just wanted it working and had other stuff to sort out!

no10chris wrote:

the axle will move if the radius bushes are worn, sounds like the problem to me, I’m gonna get under mine in a minute and see how far away my steering damper is, only other thing otherwise is engine mounts ?

Its not the steering damper, its the harmonic damper on the diff housing!

Engine mounts are worth investigating i guess, they looked ok at a quick glance though.

no10chris wrote:

I wouldn’t remove it, find out why it’s hitting, I’m trying to work out why it would hit ?...

Yeh not sure either. It looks like a lump of steel attached to a bracket with a large rubber mount. Perhaps the mount has gone soggy?
Alternatively the axle itself has been moving around under the car, but thats controlled by the panhard rod, which was fixed within the last year.

So the P38 has an LPG kit on it. Its all quite old, and i'm not convinced its working properly. The vapouriser appears to be leaking coolant as well.

It has a BiGas SGIS ECU and the Vapouriser is an RI21 DOUBLE, and after some previous discussions on here when i got the car, i swapped the bigas injectors (which werent working properly) out for some Valtek Type-30's. Used the bigas software and managed to calibrate things and get it all mostly working. Its now perfectly drivable on LPG, and if you never switched to petrol you'd probably never have an issue.

So, the issues.

Recently i had a new exhaust installed, and afterwards was surprised that the car felt a lot snappier and more responsive. However it transpired it wasnt the exhaust at all. The car had simply run out of LPG, and was running on petrol. Having done 20-30miles on petrol before refilling the LPG tank, i realised that once on LPG it went back to how it was before.

Second issue, is that at WOT, the car seems to switch to petrol. It doesnt usually beep (though occasionally it does and switches the gas off), the petrol light simply starts flashing, which i believe means the LPG ECU has decided it cant meet the petrol demand, and switches back to petrol. This switch is also REALLY rough, especially if you lift a bit and it decides to switch back to LPG, you get a big jolt as the fuelling goes to shit in the transition. I dont see why 8 LPG injectors should be unable to meet the demand, given the woeful power output of these engines... The vapouriser is apparently rated to 375hp so that shouldnt have a problem either...

Yesterday, while driving on the motorway, i was sitting at 70 climbing a very slight hill, when the LPG ran out. First thing i realised was it felt like someone had opened the throttle about 30% more, the car immediately picked up and started accellerating without my foot moving on the throttle. As i thaught "WTF?" the LPG switch started beeping to say the gas had run out. That suggests to me that the LPG mixture was wrong, but also makes me wonder why, if the ECU could see the pressure dropping, why wasnt it compensating by opening the injectors more...

Clearly i need to sort the vaporiser leak, either by rebuilding the BiGas unit, or fitting something better. Perhaps the vapouriser is faulty or clogged up or something? I'm also wondering if the ECU itself is just too old and crappy and needs updated?

What are folks thoughts.... I often hear people saying the car should run just as well on LPG as it does on petrol, but thats clearly not the situation here!

any ideas on the axle damper bashing the sump? Can i just remove it?

Thanks guys, I guess those are the only bushes still original! So kinda makes sense. And yeah I meant the harmonic balancer thingy. Any ideas on why that might be interfering and/or downsides of simply removing it?

Noticed the last few times i drove the P38 that it was acting a little oddly. Its hard to describe, but its related to road camber and unevenness i think.

Essentially you'll be driving along, and suddenly it will pull to one side meaning you need to apply a bit of counter steer. Then just as suddenly it can "flip" to the other side, and you need to steer back the other way. Its all very slight, and i suspect the steering input is exaggerated due to the steering boxes typical dead zone.

Since i've had the car i've replaced most of the front suspension, it had new shocks, new steering damper, new tie rod and track rod, new balljoints and a new wheel bearing. Panhard rod bushes have been replaced, and its also had a replacement UJ on the steering column.

It just doesnt feel particularly sure footed, and often you feel your weaving the steering wheel around like some 1960's Routemaster on a comedy TV sketch.

Most of the time its most noticable round town and on more twisty roads. It'll generally sit quite happily on the motorway at 70+ without issue. Town driving is usually OK but the odd bit of uneven road can upset it. A twisty back road can be verging towards scary at times.

Perhaps related, perhaps not, but when i was under it the other day fitting the new CPS, i noticed the steering damper on the front axle seems to have been bashing the sump. Theres a clean area and all the oil and dirt has rubbed off, so its clearly a recent thing too. That suggests the axle is not staying central, yet thats the job of the panhard rod and its freshly rebushed...

Any ideas?

yeh i tried that menu and it seemed to work fine flicking from 12v to GND when i turned the key. One of the other inputs was being a bit odd though.

From memory there was right central locking switch and left central locking switch, then something like door latch unlock, door latch lock.

The door latch ones were working, but the CDL switches just seemed to say GND all the time.

Ah well, i'll wait until the econoseal shell turns up and sort the latch out, and then try again!

I bought myself a remote filter from Marty and decided to install it today. I also have a new door latch, which i havent fitted yet due to a missing connector that i'm waiting on coming.

So i tried fitting the filter today and havent had much luck. The remote isnt currently paired, and the RF module was disconnected to stop the usual battery drain issues. I plugged the new box in and reconnected the receiver, and tried to pair the key using the "turn it in the lock and press buttons" approach. It didnt seem to work.

So i figured i would disconnect the new filter, and just connect the receiver in its normal way and try pairing. That also didnt seem to work.

I dug out the nanocom, and opened up the RF menu, and it stated "The BECM has not received a valid radio code". I cleared it and tried pressing the buttons to see if it would change, but it just continued saying the same thing. I dont know if its supposed to update and show a code etc though.

Any idea whats going on? Theres a possibility that the remote pairing isnt working due to the dodgy door lock, it was locking and unlocking mostly fine when i tried, but the latch is iffy and intermittent so maybe thats affecting things, but the BECM saying it hasnt recieved a radio code seems strange?

Maybe try BMW's realoem catalog and see if they list it against one of their models?

Thanks for the idea, but when it did this it was running on LPG and switching between LPG and petrol made no difference.
Everything points to a loss of crank signal. I just need to try and ascertain if it was just a poor quality sensor, or if something has damaged it.

Fired it up this morning and sure enough, runs perfectly when cold. Just need to wait on the new sensor now!

yeh, there was no obvious signs of contact on the tip the last time, but i'll certainly check it closely this time around.

I guess if i just creep the engine round with a bar while inspecting in thru the hole i should be able to see any oddness?

Thinking back carefully, the first sensor i fitted when i took ownership didnt actually fix the issue it was having back then. Things were a little less clear.

The previous owner had issues with it cutting out after 10minutes or so, once the engine warmed up. The story i got was a garage had installed a new crank sensor, that that fixed it, but it had broken again some period of time later. The guy had taken it back to the garage, and the garage had said that the new crank sensor had failed due to the oil leaking from a leaky rear crank seal, and that fixing it would require the engine to come out, and the seals replacing. Thus he parked it for a few years then sold it cheap.

So the first thing i did was simply install a new sensor. I figured that the oil story was probably bullshit, and even if not, a new sensor would at least get it working as a proof of concept and get it thru an MOT. When i pulled out the old sensor, it had next to no oil on it at all. But since i was in there i installed the new one anyway, it was a Lucas boxed one, from ebay, but i realise now Lucas doesnt exist and its clearly just a sticker on some junk.

However that infact didnt cure the issue, and when it got warm it still died on its arse. It also wouldnt run at all once it got hot, rather than the RPM related issue i get now. I eventually traced the fault to the MAF replaced that with a good used one, and issue solved. I then did a year and a half on that Lucas sensor with no issues, until its MOT this year in March. It failed its MOT on some balljoints and another bad MAF causing crazy CO readings.

Got all the balljoints sorted out and stuck another MAF on it, and it passed the MOT, then on its maiden voyage with a fresh ticket it died just like it did this time around.

Eventually traced it to the crank sensor back then and bought a bearmach one which claimed to be OEM, which sorted it. That one now appears to have failed after about 6 months.

So i guess the reluctor deserves some inspection, i just dont know how much can be seen without removing the flywheel?

Ok some further reading and i think it cant be the flex plate thats causing it. The reluctor for the CPS is fitted to the back of a flywheel which has the starter ring gear. The flex plate is a seperate piece that bolts onto the other side of the flywheel.

So hopefully a nice genuine sensor will sort it.

Given the fact the tacho signal dropped out, and then was flickering all over the shop with the throttle shut and just coasting along at 60mph leads me to point the finger at the crank sensor just like last time.

The last time it also did the characteristic running perfect when cold and going pete tong when warm, that crank sensors often exhibit. I'll need to fire it up later when its completely cooled down and see if it also repeats that symptom.

Could a cracked flex plate damage the crank sensor? I know these can suffer from the flex plate cracking...

I've ordered a new old stock LDV crank sensor from ebay which will hopefully work with the V8 spacer fitted. Half the price of a genuine landrover one, but hopefully actually genuine rather than the tat thats being sold as OEM...

This is the third or fourth crank sensor this car will have had. The previous owner fitted one, which was doing the characteristic "dying after 10minutes" thing when i bought the car. I fitted a "Lucas" one from ebay, which looked exactly the same as the cheapo one the previous guy had fitted. That one lasted a year, before it broke again in May this year. I fitted a "Bearmach OEM" one in May and thats now failed again. They're all the same cheap shit though, so fingers crossed its simply just cheap garbage failing, rather than something else.

Back in may i had an issue with the crank sensor. The engine would idle fine, but wouldnt rev at all, you could coax it upto 1500rpm, and any more it would start popping and farting. Got a new crank sensor, fitted it, problem solved.

The old thread is here:
https://rangerovers.pub/topic/930-strange-missfire-undrivable-when-warm-hot

Fast forward 6 months, its just done the same thing. Pulled onto the local dual carriageway, gave it full beans upto 70mph, and when i lifted and settled to a cruise it started bucking and the RPM needle dropped to 0. It flicked back up to normal RPM a few times and power returned, then dropped out again etc. Managed to pull off the road and stopped in a layby. As before, it idled perfectly. This time any throttle input at all would cause it to start spluttering popping and belching smoke. Just like last time, but at a lower RPM.

I managed to drive it home at 5mph by just letting it idle along on the torque converter.

So my first thaught was simply "these aftermarket sensors are fkn shit, i should just go buy a genuine landrover one..."

However when digging that old thread out i realised something. Both this time and the previous time, the thing has failed immediately after a full throttle high RPM blast up the same duallie. The previous time it died a bit further down the road right enough, after i'd turned off the duallie and was back on the local road. Which got me thinking, could high RPM's somehow be related? I mean clearly its not the first time in 6 months its been at max RPM, it gets full beans a reasonable amount, but it certainly got me wondering!

Thoughts?