Anyone who has seriously looked at hydrogen, knows it doesnt work for passenger cars. Its just FUD that seems to be spread by the fossil industry to muddy the waters around EV's. Our hydrogen predominantly comes from cracking natural gas, so great for the fossil fuel industry and isnt really "green" at all. It can be made in other ways, but those cost too much and are even more inefficient.
Maybe they will become a reality? But the cost differences will remain huge. After all, taking electricity and putting it into a battery then driving the wheels will always be cheaper than taking that electricity, turning it into hydrogen, pumping it into a tank, running it thru a fuel cell, charging a battery and then driving the wheels.
A hydrogen car is an EV with more steps, and those steps will ALWAYS cost more, both in manufacturing the car in the first place, and ongoing costs in fuelling.
It may see some use in heavy vehicles, long haul HGV's and the like, but its likely it will remain fairly niche, with the majority of trucks using batteries, simply due to cost.
I dont live in a city, and have put around ~50k on my EV over the last 3 years. Significantly above the average UK mileage, and really its not an issue at all. The problems are mostly imaginary, come from inexperience, or blown out of proportion for a juicy media story. Ofcourse, home charging is a must currently, public charging is too expensive.
There are a few folks on here who seem to regularly do massive mileages, but seem to also forget how unusual what they are doing is? A typical car does less than 10k a year in the UK. Very few people are regularly driving more than 200miles a day. You cant take that niche and say "EV's dont work". They work fine for the vast majority of drivers. Even on a long trip, my car (it has the smaller of the two battery options) has around 180miles range on the motorway. Thats enough for a good 2-3hours of driving, at which point i want to stop, stretch my legs and take a piss anyway. While i do that, the car fills itself back up and its ready to go again for the next leg. Unsurprisingly enough, even driving an ICE car with 300+ miles of range, i'd still stop at the same locations. If i was driving my P38, i'd be scrabbling around every 200miles looking for an LPG station, which are rapidly vanishing!!
Most of the downturn in sales of EV's is because everyones skint, and they are still a little more expensive than fossil cars, and theres constant bad press putting folks off. But theres a lot less in it than some seem to think (seen the price of a petrol golf these days?), and the fuel savings very quickly dwarf the initial purchase cost.
For some figures, 1000miles driven in an EV, charged at home at 7.5p, at 3mi/kwh (fairly inefficent) that costs £25.
1000miles driven in a petrol car at 40mpg (i've never achieved this, but lets make it look better for the ICE) costs £170
Personally i do around double that, so i'm saving around £300 a month in fuel costs alone. That was more than the monthly payment on the first EV i had... I went from driving a 10 year old motor, to driving a new car for "free". If i had already been leasing a new car, then i would have saved loads going EV.
The main problems currently are folks that cannot charge at home due to a lack of driveway etc, and folks regularly doing longer journeys, there are still some areas with patchy coverage of charging, though its expanded massively over the last couple years and will continue to do so. unfortunately for now, that rapid expansion and little competition means high costs.
I've got a thor cable knocking around i think. if you let me know the problem areas i can take a pic for you. The cable itself seemed free.
Do you get a "traction failure" message?
Where abouts are you, you really want to get a nanocom on it, although the handbrake light is a bit of a clue as its driven directly by the pressure sensor, perhaps its faulty? I think the sensor has a couple outputs, a "medium" pressure one that switches the pump on/off, and a "low" pressure one that brings on the warning light.
Might be worth checking the wiring diagram and having a probe?
A bit more on this, its sat for months not really being touched as its annoyed me.
I found my industrial pressure transducer and display that i'd previously used to monitor oil pressure in my track car while tidying the garage and decided to T it into the cooling system to try and see what was going on.
I sorta expected that the pressure would rise very quickly under load indicating pressure making its way into the coolant system, however that was not acutally what i found...
Starting from cold the pressure was sitting around 0.1bar at idle, and rose with engine RPM's to maybe 0.2bar. As the engine warmed up, this slowly climbed up to around 1 bar. RPMs would push the pressure up, 4krpm would see maybe 1.3-1.4 bar, however it didnt seem to matter wether that was 4000rpm in neutral free revving, or 4000rpm at wide open throttle, it just followed RPM's.
After a couple of miles driving, and a full throttle blast upto 70mph, the pressure seemed to settle around 1.3bar. Full throttle high RPM's peaked around 1.5bar and dropped down when the engine shifted gear.
The "minimum" pressure did seem to slowly increase over the drive, which is perhaps a little unusual, but i only did a couple miles around town. Maybe i'll try for a longer trip at the weekend. Also 1.3bar just idling on the driveway, does feel a little high, though granted i have no reference point. I considered connecting the guage to my other petrol car, but its currently off the road with no MOT.
All just seems sort of inconclusive somehow.
Maybe the engines fine and the missing coolant is just leaks? But that doesnt explain the smokescreen i was seeing with a cold engine in the winter... Oddly i've not seen any smoke from it at all these past two days when i've been testing it.
The main downside with all of these cotton filters is they simply dont filter as well as a standard paper element. They have vastly less surface area and so to achieve the advertised "better breathing" they simply have much larger holes in them. They often try to counteract that by coating the filter in oil, but the oil can contaminate your MAF sensor and causes the element to get clogged up faster.
Stick to paper!
davew wrote:
Long and the short of it is there is just a basic list of excuses - presented as reasons - to further rip us off...and so not about 'relative risk' at all ?!
EDIT: The other thing of note -for those unaware- is that No Claims Discount protection no longer actually protects your No Claims Discount....
In that if you have an incident/accident even though it is no fault of yours you will still lose some of your No Claims Discount......
So perhaps 'protection' just means something else now in small-print 'insurance-world' ?
The simple fact is the person on the phone doesnt set the premium and are indeed just providing "excuses". They cant see inside the algorithm, but they are likely to be aware of the various things that feed into it. I'm not really sure what else you expect them to say? Would you prefer they just shrugged and said "no idea"?
The premiums are derived mathematically based on the various criteria you provide. Its entirely about relative risk, which is why you pay more if you live in an area with lots of theft or drive a vehicle that gets nicked a lot, or are in a demographic that crashes their cars more etc etc.
The insurance industry lost money in 2021/2022. Rising costs mean they need to pay out more to settle claims, that money comes from the people paying for the insurance. They are not a charity, and ofcourse, if their costs are higher than their income, they are going to respond by raising prices. Also supply constraints over the last few years mean repairs take longer so they end up paying out more in hire car fees etc, or even moving to write cars off because the repairs will take too long.
As for the NCD protection, that is almost certainly explained in the policy booklet. Different insurers will apply different metrics as to how they deal with NCD if you have a claim. Some insurers only remove a set number of years even if its completely unprotected. Further, the fact you've had a claim will cause a significant increase to the base premium before the discounts are applied, so your still going to be paying more, even with all your NCD.
What are the fuel trims showing on Nanocom?
If the lambdas are working its odd that your getting rich codes. It might be that its run out of fuel trim due to another issue (eg fuel pressure)
Can you try to log MAF G/s at full throttle and see what sort of range you get? I would expect around 180-190g/sec at peak power.
Pete12345 wrote:
Do a coolant combustion gas check. If fluid turns a greenish-yellow then it's either liners, gasket failed again, or warped head. Failed liners are a lot less common that many "engineering" sites say. Generally it seems to be the US focussed forums more often !!
Did you check the heads for flatness when you did the gaskets ?
It was a completely new (used) set of heads, which i had refurbed. resurfaced, valve seats recut, new seals etc etc. I really didnt want to be revisiting this and so did the job as "properly" as i could!!
The block surface showed some markings which apparently are often a sign of leaky liners (rusty staining near the fire ring) on the two cylinders which have the orange plugs for the longest time (cyl 1 and 3). Cyl 6 also had an orangey plug, which is a more recent development and it too isnt near any water gallery.
I've been running it on petrol this past couple weeks as the LPG garage was out when i last went by, so the LPG is ruled out too.
I do have a spare block, but after the escapades with this one, i'm really not sure i want to pour thousands into it. Realistically by the time i've paid for top hat liners and all the usual refurbishment bits and bobs, i'll be 3 grand into it if not more. Probably money better spent on a BMW i6 of some description!
I'm not really sure where the idea that liner problems are rare has come from... The main issue is caused by core shift in the casting process meaning the cylinder wall thickness is uneven. The issue was so well known Land Rover themselves were X-Raying and grading the blocks in the factory to pick the ones with least core shift to build 4.6's from. The core shift causes thin walls between the cylinder and the coolant jacket. These thin walls can then sometimes crack, creating a path up the back of the liner into the cylinder.
Slipped liners i would say are rare, but thats not the most common failure, the most common failure is simply a crack in the block and coolant getting into the chamber.
I've ordered some combustion leak testing fluid. If its showing combustion gas, then i think i'll throw some steel seal in and see what that achieves. In the mean time, i could live with the completely knackered engine if the interior wasnt disgusting and horrible, so i guess i should focus on that.
One concern is those heater core o-rings... i really cant imagine 6 month old o-rings can have failed? They are 22x2.5mm Viton green seals, 70 shore, ordered from a reputable supplier. I specifically wanted to avoid chinesium in a blue box...
Yeah stone cold it's still fully pressurised. The head gaskets were in a bad way, but given it's still doing it I guess it has to be a liner leak... I guess water glass is the next option, I don't think I want to spend the money going top hat, I'd rather put another engine in it instead, especially as it also needs camshaft and lifters.
Really need to dig into the plenum and try to figure out what's going on there, is there any photos showing what I'm looking for?
Tailgate seal is really ropey, doesn't fit well and the tailgate rattles when driving. Annoyed with myself that I didn't pull the seal off the vogue that was in upullit, they've had zero p38s since that one went. New ones seem somewhat expensive:(
As some of you will remember, my P38 has been using coolant for a long time. 5+ years. It was also pressurising the cooling system and showing signs of coolant in the cylinders (some of the plugs were stained orange). It has however never actually overheated, so long as you keep it in water.
It seemed to be a multitude of issues, leaks in the engine bay pipework, leaks from the water pump, leaks from the heater core orings as well as dodgy head gaskets.
I took everything apart in the summer, gave it new headgaskets, new water pump, new heatercore orings and replaced every coolant hose on the engine. Removed the horrible T-pieces feeding the LPG and rerouted that to be fed from the throttle heater loop instead. Basically ticked every box in the "fix your P38 v8" hot list...
Except, its still using coolant, and still pressurising the coolant system. The top rad hose is properly solid after the engines warmed up, feels like pressing on a car tyre. I've got a leak on the hose on the inlet manifold that goes to the LPG vaporisor that i cant seem to stop, i've already striped one jubilee clip from tightening it up that much trying to stop it. This morning when i got in i noticed red drips all over the side of the centre console carpet and some contorting later it would appear the new heater core o-rings are leaking.
It seems to be leaking LESS than before, which i guess is something, but i'm getting somewhat pissed off with it now.
The interiors in bits as i didnt want to refit all the plastic trims until i'm sure the leaks are sorted. Its also mouldy and horrible inside as both footwells and the boot are damp... The wife tried to use it yesterday while i was at work to find the child seat was covered in mould-fur. So that had to get stripped down, bleached and put thru the washing machine...
Any ideas beyond getting rid and buying a Toyota?
Still not super clear what's going on with this.
Reset the codes the other week and the light went off. Did a few short runs all fine.
Yesterday I went to the dump, no bother, then when I got back in the car to goto b&q an hour later, abs and TC lights are back on. Tried to reset but I was in a rush and nanocom was being dumb. Reset codes when I got home and again they cleared.
Battery is not in the best of health, so it was full array of error codes after I started it the first time (airbag, gearbox fault etc) and yet the abs was fine. But then the second time there were no battery related errors and that's when the abs flaked out 🤷
I'll need to stick the battery on charge and see what it does.
Theres a microcontroller on the panel which reads all the switch positions and sends them to the BECM over a serial bus connection. If that micro or its supporting circuitry has failed, the whole panel stops working.
Diode should work on a continuity test, but only in one direction, you may need to reverse the meter leads.
i reset the codes as i was planning to swap over the sensor and the light went off and stayed off... I've got a new sensor here now so if it comes back i'll try swapping it out.
Feels like its been broken more than working recently and not getting any better 😒
Maybe its just a bad sensor? I guess that would be the simplest first step and i'm just overthinking it!
Last month i got the car converted over to the newer Wabco D ABS system after the original modulator failed.
Drove the car at the weekend and it seems to have developed a fault in the new system. ABS and TC lights were on and the dash reported ABS Fault message.
Reading the fault codes i get a message saying "Front Right sensor short to Another sensor" which seems very obscure.
Some googlefu suggests this might be related to a faulty ECU, im also wondering if its maybe moisture/damp related? The car does seem to have a small leak into the passenger footwell, so perhaps the ECU has got wet?
Anyone seen this fault before?
I bought some "E" profile draught excluder which seemed to work-ish. ducts still feel a little loose, ideally i think slightly thicker profile would have worked better. They seem to be on there though. I might apply some tape or something as well, though i tried that initally without the foam and found it didnt stick very well to the heaterbox. Will see what other tape is around.
Cheers for the pointers :)
Part of the brake job required me to remove the two ducts that go between the blower motor and heater box on each side.
Getting those ducts in and out was an absolute shitemare, however theres a further issue and thats that they dont seal in anyway. It looks like there used to be some sort of foam sealing on the duct which has long since perished, now the two parts just rattle around loose on the spigots, which will explain why i get a cold draft from the footwell in the winter!!
Anyone got any advice on what i can use to replace this missing foam, and perhaps also any tips on getting the ducts in without mangling the foam.
When i had a duff crank sensor on my GEMS, i would get "Gearbox Fault" when it went started acting up.
okay paying attention to it when its stationary, with the ignition off and system depressurised, i can push the pedal almost all the way to the floor, its like pressing on a big spring.
If i turn the ignition on and let the system come up to pressure, the pedal moves about half as far then comes up hard.
My feeling is that its probably still got air in it somewhere... Maybe the master cylinder section.