Re using the M10 x 1 mm (extra fine / special fine) thread rather than the standard M10 x 1.5 mm thread (coarse) or M10 x 1.25 (fine) for pipe fittings.

All about thread depth. The fine thread is shallower so it's safe in the relatively thin walls of pipe.

Clive

Pete

Just looked and turns out it wasn't RAVE itself that I printed out. It was pdf versions of the hard copy manuals :-

LRL 0326 ENG for mechanicals and body

LRL 0086 ENG for electrical

Only (!) 2,000 pages.

Sorry but it was around 11 years ago. Found the files on one of the sites offering RAVE at teh time (maybe Green Oval) so I remembered it as the same thing.

5,000 pages is bit much even for me.

Clive

My answer to the oily fingerprint problem with my RAVE printout was to use ring binders and put the pages in transparent sleeves. 5-Star brand are affordable and decent quality. Name brand ones like Rexel were stupid expensive when I did the printout thing.

Ring binders make it easy to assemble a job specific manual by pulling pages out as needed and temporarily putting them into a workshop binder. Pulling pages can be a faff but it helps get round the hop about from one section to another issue that makes dead tree RAVE harder to use than electronic Rave which does the jumps automatically. I find pulling pages helpful to remind me of how I need to do the job and what tools to set out.

Another ring binder holds useful stuff collected from the internet, forums et al. Mostly extra explanations, how I did it et al. Not forgetting the Nanocom manual.

Dead tree RAVE in ring binders needs about 3 ft of shelf space tho'.

Uneconomic if you only have an inkjet printer tho'. My old LaserJet MP4+ did the deed affordably. Albeit one side at a time. 40 pages a night got it done in acceptable time without going crosseyed.

Clive

romanrob

Nah.

Not loctite.

Comes from Bristol 603.

Had one stuck out front under a cover for about 30 years waiting for there ight combination of energy, funds and time to arrive so I can finally sort it out. Got scammed into it in the first place and trying to find folk to do the bit of fixing thats beyond me has proven impossible. Not helped by redundancy and carer thing putting a huge crimp in things over a decade or so from 2004.

I really need to get it moved on as I'm 70 in four days I'm unlikely to sort it. Lovely though the "gentleman's sporting carriage" is the P38 suits me better.

Was tempted to change handle to CliveP53 just to confuse the living daylights out of everyone! (Hint. Think Bike!)

Clive

Totally agree that the best loctite to use is almost certainly the one you already have on the shelf. I have about 6! All old style stud fix, bearing fit, screw fix et-al labels.

If you start seriously perusing the data sheets it's very easy to end up wondering "what the heck is the difference between various grades". Way back an overly cynical co-worker reckoned it was all the same stuff with different colour dyes! Which may be taking things a teeny bit far.

However when I see a new to me grade mentioned I tend to have quick look at the data sheet just in case there is something special about it. No cure time / strength curve for aluminium and a low peak strength with stainless steel on the 2700 data sheet rang a few alarm bells as, way back, I've seen reports of cyanoacrylate joints being weak due to unsuitable substrates inhibiting proper cure. Loctite is basically a cyanoacrylate. I've certainly undone a few loctited bolts where the loctite apparently did next door to nothing beyond gum up the threads a bit. Where I'd done the assembly in the first place I couldn't blame the other guy. But it did hammer home the act that the stuff is not infallible.

But in a practical world how much strength to you need for loctite to be effective. Even not gone right off is probably more than enough. The oil filler spout joint is a respectable area so even something as weak as sellotape stickum would probably hold.

Clive

I use Loctite 603, the old green high strength bearing fit, mostly because I've got it in stock. It is said to be designed as a retainer for cylindrical components rather than thread locker so it ought to be better at the pipe retaining job.

Trying to extract meaningful data about the actual real world strength of the umpty-six breeds of Loctite makes a two bottle of whiskey hangover seem like pleasant relaxation. I've never really gottten a handle on it but usually manage to choose something that works.

603 claims 22.3 Newtons/sq mm, 3,250 psi shear strength under iSO 10123 test conditions. Which is pretty strong. The data sheet gives explicit cure / strength curves for aluminium substrates too. I doubt if it gets up to much over 80 % of its strength in steel but it does cure properly.

Loctite 2700 is a thread locker claiming around 35 - 40 Nm / 25 - 30 ft lb breakaway torque and 20 N/sq mm, 2900 psi shear strength so its pretty similar strength to 603 in steel. Being a threadlocker it really doesn't like being used in thicker layers or being used with an activator. Strength with activator is about 1/4 of that without. The really worrying thing about 2700 is that it's very sensitive to substrate. According to the dat sheet it gets to full strength on steel and zinc, half strength on brass and one third on stainless steel and zinc dichromate. No curves for aluminium which is worrying. Given the low strength on stainless steel I suspect that oxide layers inhibit cure and seriously degrade performance.

2700 is a modern formulation claimed to be health and safety friendly. The sort of thing that generally means the new improved doesn't actually work as well out in the real world as the old stuff. Getting the best out of it probably needs much more careful preparation too.

Clive

I did wonder if copper would have been OK on a car air-conditioning system. So if I got totally stuck rolling up my sleeves and making one from copper or, preferably, one of the more vibration resistant alloys like kunifer would be quite acceptable. Seems strange that nobody does such things. I imagine that brass would be fine for the threaded joiners. Surely to god they are standard. If brass won't do one of the bronzes ought to be fine.

Something to think about if Land Rover are not going to restock such things.

Actually Mrs Google finds a few firms who can make pipes to pattern so my air-con guy was wrong.

Thanks for the compressor offer but mine is a Thor. I'd be buying a new one anyway to be sure of seal life. The experiences of folk I meet round here with used compressors has been ahem mixed. Anyway with the big 70 due in July (they've finally forced me to get a photocard driving licence) I have to come to terms with it being OK to spend some of the money I've been saving for my old age!

Clive

The air-conditioning service guy rolled up after lunch to find out why my system had stopped working so soon after the condenser was replaced in December. Turned out there was a small leak at the compressor drive shaft seal and a leak in the dryer to evaporator pipe AWR3277.

The compressor is merely going to be expensive but the pipe is officially discontinued and no longer available. Air conditioning guy suggested E-Bay was the only hope and showed me the only one currently listed. Google found several listings of the pipe from the usual sources but only Craddock implied they might have stock. Phone call revealed one left. I grabbed it!

I was surprised when the air-conditioner guy said that there is no one offering a service making air-conditioner pipes to pattern. When manufacturer stocks are exhausted thats it. Whatever the make. Seems odd to me. How difficult can it be to bend and flare alloy pipes.

Worrying.

At least I'll be sorted in early June.

Clive

Although RAVE bleeding process step 1 should be all you need to do after changing the accumulator, if you need to do it at all. My new accumulator just when straight on and the pedal was solid.

But best practice would be set up with the car lifted and all four wheels off then do the whole darn procedure for bleeding and fluid change. Three hours of your life you won't get back but job will stay done for a few years. When the can says "Heinz 666, Worms, Large" its generally false economy to try a short cut. If the short cut fails it always seems to take far longer to re-set into proper procedure mode than it would have done to set-up right in the first place.

Trying a not quite so short cut partial procedure after the short cut fails is generally a very bad idea. Especially on a P38 which is so brutally intolerant of not to book approaches in many areas. There are some non book ways that work just fine in the right places but you must read up and understand when they are appropriate. Experienced "I don't need no workshop manual" mechanics steaming in and trying to treat a P38 like an Austin 7, or maybe Moggie Thousand, is a major reason for the P38 un-reliability reputation.

Before doing the full bleed procedure print yourself off a couple of check-lists so you and your assistant can tick things off as you go. So easy to get muddled and out of order first time through. If you have RAVE on the computer printing out the relevant pages and sipping them into loose leaf ring binder transparent wallets as a mini manual to take out to the car is a great help. Over the years I've accumulated a number of such mini manuals which have proved very useful when aged memory lets me down.

When it comes to working on a new to you P38 the motto has to be "Hope for the best. Prepare for the worst. Expect to find evidence of sub room temperature IQ mechanics.".

Clive

PS If you've not already got a set do get the proper partial hex brake pipe spanners before you start so you don't round off a bleed nipple or finally wreck a partially rounded one assaulted by Mr Open End Is Fine.

Sorry to hear of your old garage problems. But regrettably unsurprised. No excuse for a properly equipped garage having problems doing the ball joints. But cowboy is so normal with UK garages.

+1 on the hydraulic type joint splitters. Bought a cheap US Pro one when my trusty Churchill screw type couldn't manage the job. Realistically any garage should have one as time is money. Mine cost about 15 minutes at garage rates. Even Snap On (aka Rip-Off) is affordable for a pro.

ABS sensors? If it doesn't come out inside 5 minutes twisting it's cheaper to drill and buy. As any pro garage should know. Same idea as keeping the battery angle grinder with a thin cutting disk handy.

Seized ball joints can't be adjusted? Very funny. Bit of heat, they will shift. Always. That said with mine I used a bit of the DIY savings to just bung a new drag link in and be done with it. At 68 I've finally learned that the only stuff worth fighting with is unobtanium. Induction heater kit coming if I ever have to schedule another big job. With a bit of luck that might be on some desperate mates car and they can pay for it. Clives mates rates are cheap but if tooling is needed mate pays. Before we start.

Agreed you need Irwin or similar type "rounded bolt head" shifters around for the odd bolts that defy you. But any garage taking on older cars must have those. No excuse.

Actually when taking mine down I was very very pleasantly surprised by the condition of the mating threads in bolts and holes. No corrosion on any that were still originally factory. Bloody obvious where "Mr Skilled Mechanic" had been in tho' from the corrosion.

Big tip use the weakest loctite to seal the threads. Especially with import "stainless" bolts and screws as some of the material isn't exactly what you'd expect from the specifications so chemical galling is possible. Party trick if you've got a suitable pair of imported dissimilar stainless threaded components in a reasonable size is to spin them together fast enough to heat gall and lock solid!

If you have the official hydraulic tool (or clone) shifting the ball joints is silly easy. I did three of mine with the G-Clamp style and worked hard. One defied me so I had to clone the official tool and it popped out with three fingers on the hydraulic ram screw. Although teh clamp style usually does the job I shoulda followed my instincts and done a clone in the first place. Easy for me to say as I have the workshop facilities to do so which ordinary guy doesn't.

Agreed that in the UK there is no way the bottom ball adjuster is gonna shift. Mated for eternity. And a good thing too as I wasn't looking forward to reverse engineering the setting gauge on incomplete data.

Glad you've nearly gotten the car done.

Currently waiting for my back to unsieze so I can get a few simple, but hard to reach jobs done. Including a blend motor / flap pair that doesn't like high summer which I've been putting off for years.

Clive

Short answer to extracting the cable from the firewall is with great difficulty. Took half a day to get mine out. Mostly because I didn't want to go all medieval on it. But needs must in the end.

I were getting one made I'd look into devising a separate bush to go through the firewall and rethinking how it attaches to the pedal so its all much easier to hook up when upside down in the footwell. In retrospect It might have been quicker to do a re-engineered one from scratch rather than fit the NOS one I had! But I still have all the gubbins to make cables from scratch.

If planning on getting one made possibly the folk who make cables for the classic motorcycle world might be able to help.

Clive

+1 for changing ATF and filter. Two or three changes on lightly used car with some decent miles and bit of Italian Tune up in between to get fluids nice and hot so they flow well. Hopefully shifting any odd bits floating around.

Gave the big red beast that treatment the other year after changing the cooler and I'm convinced everything snappier and just working better. First change came out a bit dirty but, realistically was probably fine, second change wasn't quite clean. So being an anal type I gave it another. What I really miss about no dipstick on the Thor cars is not being able to see what the oil actually looks like and how much grumpf its carrying round.

Opinions on a full flush to change all the oil in one go, including that left in the torque converter, seem to be divided. There is school of thought claiming its risky on an older transmission.

Clive

nigelbb wrote:

Clive603 wrote:

Opie Oils sent me Mahle filters the last couple of times.

As its 9+ miles to a factor (or, whisper it, Halfrauds) I switched to Opie kits a couple or three services ago as being decent value and more convenient with everything coming in one box. Bit hit'n miss on drain plug washers, but I stock Dowty seals and use them rather than the usual alloy washers so that matters not. They tend to send two boxes of two pollen filters rather than one box of two. So getting overstocked there.

Clive

I didn't realise that Opie Oils sold service kits. I have bought Valvoline VR1 20w/50 from them previously as they have good value prices. I think that I have enough sump plug washers for my next ten services.

Do you have a link to their service kits? I can't find them on the Opie Oils website. When I enter details of my P38 it lists lots of different oils but no service kit. There is a slick webpage that looks up your registration number to get details of the car but then it lists lots of parts that very clearly aren't for a P38.

Sorry for delay in replying. Up to eyes in finance crap!

Just had a look at the Opie site and it appears to have changed somewhat since last time I used them, well over a year ago I reckon. Don't really recall exactly what I did that time, maybe I just followed a list of suggestions. Just can't remember exactly.

As you say no ready made service kit listed, you have to build it up from the list of service essentials. I always go in via vehicle details not registration number. As you found out using the registration is a bit hit & miss with some non P38 parts coming up.

Sorry.

Clive

New screen finally fitted this afternoon. Only took 5 phone calls and lots of discussion to get a new appointment.

Another pattern one unfortunately so it's not going to last. Fitter was chatty and agreed that an original one was far thicker and far stronger but insurance jobs don't get factory screens unless the car is under three years old. Top trim had been bodged on by fitter of previous screen and was unusable so he fitted a universal soft trim they keep for such jobs. Which actually looks good. Paying for wiper blades on the original booking was a big mistake. The Bosch ones Autoglass keep are too stiff to follow the screen. Reckon the chances of a refund are zilch.

The fitter told me that the original cancellation notice was issued by Autoglass central after he asked where the trims were as only the screen had been delivered. Autoglass central told him that they would contact me and sort things out.

What interesting news!

With 20/20 hindsight I should have ignored the cancellation notice and just turned up. Fitter said that he'd have been perfectly happy to fit the screen with the old trims if I'd personally given the go-ahead there and then. Fitter completely unsurprised that Autoglass central didn't have a clue about trims not being available from Land Rover.

Got well and truly rained on wandering around Tonbridge whilst job was being done to see what had changed in the 30 odd years since I last went there. Horrified to see they still have a Wimpy Bar in the High Street. I thought Wimpy went extinct last century!

Clive

Could well just be in need of a good go through and service. Basically clean up all the innards, new brushes on the motor if needed, grease and lubricate as required before putting back on the car.

Seems too be absolutely no rhyme nor reason as to how long this sort of thing lasts but my attitude is anythings over 10 years old always gets a go through if there are no obvious "its dead, its an ex-motor" reasons. Mostly seems to work.

As ever some soldier on happily for 20 - 30 years and starship miles without issue. Others need regular stroking and petting.

Clive

Opie Oils sent me Mahle filters the last couple of times.

As its 9+ miles to a factor (or, whisper it, Halfrauds) I switched to Opie kits a couple or three services ago as being decent value and more convenient with everything coming in one box. Bit hit'n miss on drain plug washers, but I stock Dowty seals and use them rather than the usual alloy washers so that matters not. They tend to send two boxes of two pollen filters rather than one box of two. So getting overstocked there.

Clive

I think it sensible to pull the air spring out rather than try the job with it all fitted.

Not done the collets and seals on our air springs but I have had previous form on similar fittings.

It's important to get the O rings settled properly and free of strain in the recesses. Any twist or not quite straightness and they will leak or, worse, be pushed out of position by the pipe when you slide it in to the collet. Hopefully ours have well made, good quality, collets but some of the inexpensive variety don't retain the O rings all that well leading to trouble if the pipe isn't in line when you push it in. You really need to see exactly what you are doing whilst remaining cool calm and collected during the execution of the task.

If the floating air suspension tables and similar devices I had to deal with in the past are any guide leaky O rings are almost invariably due to poor seating rather than O ring trouble per se. If the end of the pipe isn't carefully trimmed and smoothed off with touch of taper as per book its far too easy to push the O ring out off its ideal seating position. Theoretically when the pressure comes on everything shuffles around to seal as per book so long as the pipe entry is straight and parallel to the collet bore. Any offset push or odd angles and it's all in the lap of the gods. Sometimes Mr Careless gets away with very poor technique and sometimes even Inspector Meticulous has to go all anal (terrifying thought) to make things come right.

Usually common sense and ordinary care is ample but if Lawyer Murphy has decided it's your turn to be target of the day for one of his crack Gremlin Assault Squads ........

Clive

Good point about sliding the bottom trim off. Might take a look when it stops raining and warms up a bit to see how many clips are actually broken on both trims. Like pretty much everything to do with ageing plastic clips I reckon third time is the charm. First couple of goes odds are one or more gets broken.
Another skill to learn.
Guess next step is to bike over to Autoglass next week and talk to the fitter direct.

Far as bottom clips are concerned I found a couple of places claiming to have them a week or so back but everyone says no longer available. Heritage claim 8 to 12 weeks delivery tho'. At £ 6 a pop. Yikes!

Clive

Trotting back from Manchester the middle of last month the windscreen was hit by a stone about an inch and a bit from the bottom and pretty much under the parked position of the driver wiper blade close to the drive shaft. Crack started out about 6 inches long on the outer screen and spread steadily. By now it's pretty much all the way across the screen on both sides of the glass. Presumably the recent freezing weather didn't help.

So it needed fixing pronto.

Doing the usual insurance company route AXA directed me to the Autoglass portal and I got an appointment for January 25th at Tonbridge around 13 miles away. Was about 10 day wait which is annoying but I guess acceptable.

Half way to the appointment I got a phone call saying they couldn't do the job then and that they would be back in touch to re-arrange.

Total silence from Autoglass since.

Managed to dig out the semi-secret phone number to speak to a human but two calls haven't gotten me much beyond "An e-mail has been set to our technical help desk." So far as I can see the semi-secret phone number goes to a trained petting and feather smoothing person who isn't really authorised to do anything. First time round I did get the pleasure of 20 minutes on hold listening to "music!" that was crappy even before being wrecked by the on hold filters. Small reward was being able to tease out a suggestion that the issues were due to some of the external trim being obsolete and no longer available from Land Rover. Second call was less helpful.

So tell me something I didn't know.

Looks like that as of now the lower trim is un-obtanium new, pattern upper trims can be got and trim clips for both can be found but it's unclear whether or not they are factory or pattern. So whats the next move given that I've already started the insurance company route.

Ultimate fall back is I buy a screen, find trims, accepting used but good for the lower, and pay an independent fitter to do the deed. Approaching £1,000 I fear. Ouch!

Last time round Direct Line got National Windscreens on the job. Fitted a pattern, un-tinted screen with iffy heating, re-used the old trim and dislodged the rubber finisher between screen and dashboard. Also managed to damage the bottom trim and, I suspect, some of the clips. Not going there again.

Clive

No idea.

I have the usual yellow, red, grey, blue wires for the motors. A green and black pair for the heater. Another green and a blue with black trace doing ... . Something to do with the optional electro-chromatic glasses perhaps?

I guess I can get a 6 pin mirror and re-use my wiring. That will be second time round as I hauled the motor and adjuster link assemblies out of some NOS Arabic market unpainted mirrors years ago when the original mechanics broke. Still got everything left over in stock complete with a pair of nice tinted glasses with Arabic script on the bottom.

Looking around E-Bay there seem to be a few NOS mirror units, both single and pairs, floating around so I'll probably go that way and sort the case colours out later. Far as I can see the connector on my car wiring will match 10 pin and 12 pin mirrors, just not fully populated. Presumably the mirror itself doesn't care if the memory bits aren't connected.

Clive