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

Mine has 8 wires going into the socket and 8 coming out of the plug. Non memory with heated glass.

Also skeptical as to the strength of new Chinese gears and actuating racks compared to the originals.

Clive

A high speed lorry stole my drivers door mirror Wednesday night so I'm looking for a replacement in Alveston Red with an 8 pin plug. Which might take bit of finding.

It looks like new aftermarket mirrors in primer can be found for around £150, about 2 or 3 times decent used price, but if they are well made there is certain attraction in getting nice new operating gears and racks rather than hoping these fragile components aren't coming to the end of their lives in a used mirror. Has anyone ever seen one and have views on the quality. Changing the plug for my old one shouldn't be an issue if they aren't 8 pin.

Clive

Bolt wrote:

Ahhhh..... So that does indeed clear up the issue....It's not an issue, just another interesting "feature"
of these beasties!
Still trying to work out just why you would need to shut off the compressor before activating the valves?

Most likely done to ensure the system can't suffer "logic race" type problems if a functional but not in absolutely perfect condition gets its inputs in the wrong order under some unspecified set of conditions.

If I recall correctly from a, thankfully exceedingly brief, encounter with pneumatic logic controls its considered best to do one thing at a time because hysteresis and operating times have inherent variability due to the system having to be able to work over a certain pressure range. An issue that can only get worse as components age.

Clive

Mine is clearly toast. Impossible to get it all working with the zebra strip. So I gave up and got a used working one. Which will do the deed.
For now!
Hopefully when the ribbon ins that one dies it will accept a zebra.

Clive

Aragon
Interesting to hear that the E section profile is little on the loose side. Far as I can see the overall thickness dimension is, for all practical purposes, the same as the three rib W section I have which is a very nice fit. Stiff enough to be stable but not so stiff that the adhesive doesn't hold it when pushing on. I never managed to get the foam stuff to work. Usually either tore for pushed off part way round.

I guess the shallower central rib of the E section doesn't really get squidged so only the outer ones provide support.

I imagine it's made that way to provide bit more tolerance or "squidge range" when used as a draught excluder. My 3 rib W has, probably, about a mm or so of useful squidge range before it's effectively solid. Many naughty words when I had to re-work a door frame to use it for its intended purpose!

Clive

Make sure the thread is clean and use something to stop corrosion or galling so you can get them out if you ever need to. Thinned down, or plate spanners aren't very strong. Don't want to have to resort to making extra long jaws with provision for a keeper across the end so they don't spread. I usually use the weakest form of loctite for that sort of thing.

If you are thinning a spanner start with a decent one. Last time I tried that with a "don't know where it came from cheapy" out of the bottom of the toolbox it turned out to have a crack inside the jaw forging. So I made a plate one.

Usually the simple approach works just fine but sometimes the Head Gremlin turns up with a full squad and, metaphorically, says "hold my beer!".

Clive

W profile draught excluder strip is somewhat more resistant to mangling, or being pushed off, when fitting as the ribs that do the sealing are stronger than simple foam but still able to deflect as you push things together. Looks rather like a multi-Vee (serpentine) ancillary drive belt. Always seems to be made as a double width that can be split down the middle if its too wide.

I bought a lifetime supply from LiDL some years back under the Powerfix branding. Current version, branded Parkside, has dual strips of 4 ribs rather than the 3 ribs on the ones I bought but I imagine it would work as well. Around £6 or £7 off E-Bay.

I imagine there are other brands of similar stuff. E section has a shorter central rib but may well work just as well.

Clive

Thanks for that info. Ordered one.

Clive

Mine certainly pre-dates the ones Marty had made. Looks to be a standard size rather than a special so it's pretty certain it doesn't fit as it should.

Time to order another one then. E-Bay pot luck or RPI? RPI claim to have sold lots in their You-tube video.

Total PIA to get the pcb on mine clean. Probably because that end was still well stuck down. So glad I had one of the "tube of glass fibre" brushes originally developed to shift rosin and flux deposits from multi-core solder joints hanging around.

Clive

The heater control display finally decided to go into permanent missing pixel mode last week so I fitted the zebra strip I'd had lying around for several years when pixel problems first arose. (Which promptly fixed themselves once I'd gotten the strip and made sure the battery was always well up. Magic!)

Unfortunately I can't get a full set of display elements to come up. Despite several cleanings and fitting tries the bottom half (ish) isn't co-operating. A bit of judicious thumb pressure on the bottom of the screen brings up some signs of life suggesting the zebra strip isn't settling flat on the contact areas of PCB and display.

Any ideas as to how this could be fixed? Looks to me that the zebra stip I have is little too tall and a little too thin to work properly in the space available hence it could tilt when the display is tightened down. Are all the zebra strips the same size or could my early E-Bay sourced one be wrong?

Clive

Realistically stainless steel is the only option certain to last well on a low annual mileage vehicle. If you don't get things good and hot on a regular basis internal condensation is certain to start eating the silencer box from the inside out. Doesn't help that most, if not all, of the aftermarkets are wadding filled systems which not only take much longer to warm through than a baffle system but also concentrate the corrosive stuff from the exhaust. Found out the hard way that handling wadding blown out of a failed tailbox with bare hands wasn't a good idea. The crap collected in the wadding decided that starting to eat me was a good second course! Distinctly stingy and a major pain to scrub off.

After a "best we can get"aftermarket steel set of tailboxes from the local exhaust guy failed after around 3 1/2 years with the original RR centre box starting to go I put a Double S centre box and tail sections on. About 2 1/2 times the price of "best we can get" from the local guy. So if 3 1/2 years was an appropriate life I'm due to break even sometime next year.

As Dave says way too noisy at first but it does quieten down over the years. If you do buy a Double S system note that mine didn't come with clamps. Which wasn't noticed until the old system had been irrevocably cut off. To make matters worse the exhaust guy didn't have the largest size in stock so we had to wait a few hours for one to be delivered. I ended up fitting stainless steel Mikalor types as Id on't approve of the usual Benelli (U bolt) style.

Clive

Looks to be geographically limited "not for sale or use in UK, Europe, Canada, Mexico or USA" from the BMI website. Download probably has location checker.

Software is on annual subscription so odds are the 160 aussie dollars price is for one year sub. Soon adds up to a heck of a lot. May be worth it for pro but but not home user.

Dongle is probably a cheap wireless or Bluetooth enabled ODB transmitter receiver unit. All the intelligence is in the software on the phone.

Gotta wonder where the makers got the software from. List looks too comprehensive for in dependent development given the potential market size.

Clive

Well that was "interesting". Went the long and expensive way round but finally sorted.

Turned out to be throttle cable adjustment being way out. As it has been in all 11 years I've owned the car. It always seemed to run OK so I never bothered to check the setting it arrived with, basically 3/16" free play with the adjuster close to the end of its travel. With it that far off book I guess the MAF and TPS, which according to RAVE has an important part to play in setting fuelling all through the range, were barely on the same page and drift over the years finally put them at odds.

After ordering a MAF from Land Rover Direct on the 7 th, because the Island 4x4 site, wasn't working for me, I decided to try things with the throttle adjusted up as far as it would go. Still 1/8" play but I was able to get a kick-down with full blooded stamp on the accelerator. As I had a new cable in stock and the one fitted was out of adjuster travel I decided to change the cable.

Bad idea!

2 days of struggle swearing and trying various things finally got the old one out. If I ever pull another one out I shall immediately cut the inner cable and chisel off the end of the rubber sleeved plastic thingy inside the car. With the knob on the end gone a few swift taps with the special offset drift I welded up for the job pushed the thing out far enough to grab on etc outside easy as could be. Given how impossibly stubborn mine was initially I expected to find the support tube in the body corroded to hell and gone. In actuality it was perfectly smooth. I reckon the difficulty of removal is due to the knob on the end of the plastic bit swelling the rubber ridge sitting on the inner end of the bulkhead support so much that no power on earth will pull it through.

New cable went in easily. I used red rubber grease rather than the RAVE approved liquid soap. Persuading the little plastic bung to go into the hole in the accelerator cable took another half day of braille manipulation. If you don't get it right first time it's fatally easy to spread one of the prongs a little bit. With predictable results. I found it best to tape the other end of the cable up to compress the boot to its minimum length so there was some excess cable inside permitting free movement of the plastic bung. Wooden block under the accelerator pedal held it out of the way at bottom of its travel. No way that I found to stop the pedal going up the left sleeve of my overalls every time I moved.

New cable had just enough adjustment to get the gap between cable selector and actuator down to about 1 mm. Leading me to think it was a pattern cable.

Bonnet shut, interior plastic re-fitted, tidying up nearly done when the penny dropped. RAVE shows the cable bracket running straight up and down. Mine was at an angle leaning towards the throttle actuators. Surely the bracket holes aren't slotted. Diving under the bonnet again and making with a spanner proved they were slotted. Setting the bracket vertical restored the cable adjustment to something sensible with the RAVE specified zero gap between cable and acutator.

Which I could have done in the first place if I'd gone back to first principles and verified all the set up rather than assuming "it was OK, now something has gone wrong". Considering thats the first thing I do with someone else's problem its distinctly hoist with my own petard. Sigh.

Quick test run shows car is now much more lively than it ever was and the gearbox much more responsive to the throttle. It always seemed to drive decently before but very much non sporting. As I expected from a softly tuned V8 in 2 tons of permanent four wheel drive car with the aerodynamics of a shed. Seemingly effortless 80 mph motorway cruise was clearly deceptive.

Just to make a bad weekend and start to this week worse the poxy SRS light has come on. Double checked any connections that might have gotten disturbed to no avail so hopefully it's an intermittent issue returning after 5 years.

Foam in the heater duct joints had gone so I used some self adhesive ribbed door/window sealer got from LiDL a year or three back 'cos it might be handy. Just the job. Before fitting I went round the ends of the duct with duct tape leaving about half the width upstanding. 8 snipe cuts, two at each end of the corners, let me fold the tape down over the draught sealer so things didn't get caught up on the edges of the other parts of the duct. The duct slipped in so easily that I had to look three times to confirm it was in.

Clive

Reason for suspecting the TPS is that the car feels as if it's not reading about the last third of throttle travel. Drives normal up to around half and a bit but the ECU doesn't seem to be seeing anything beyond. Feels just like a carburetted engine with restricted fuel flow so it can't keep up with the engine demands when you want high power and high revs. Something I've had deal of experience with on motorcycles.

I expected that MAF issues would throw up all sorts of continuous codes rather than a fairly rare intermittent.

Next step is to try driving with the MAF unplugged.

Clive

Managed another 100 or so miles today with a reasonable amount of motorways and fast road. Gearbox adaptives seem to have gotten their act together but the beast is still reluctant to deliver power above about 4,000 rpm and no proper lockdown surge above 3,000 (ish). I did manage to get him delivering power past 4,500 a time or two tho'.

Feels a lot like he's not getting full throttle. Did the obvious check and verified full movement on the actuator. Adjusted up the cable as far as it would go but there is still 1/8" gap between the cable sector and the actuator proper. Never touched cable since I bought the car so adjustment probably isn't the issue. New cable in stock.

Only fault Nanocom picked up when we got home is :
PD172 = Mixture adaptation Failure FRA
Bank 1 Drive Cycle 3
Occurred 4 times, signal too high, intermittent and not present
All the values look sensible at idle.

I'm thinking Throttle Position Sensor issues rather than MAF. Is there a way of cleaning the innards?

Chucked a bottle of injector cleaner in on the off chance. Can't hurt. Hopefully I can fit in bit more running tomorrow.

Spending £17,000 on an Audi A6 Allroad for the official unofficial kid sister ought to be worth a few brownie points! Which I desperately need as she is here for month whilst her bathroom is rebuilt!

Clive

After the best part of 150 miles today at "normal for Sussex" speeds the beast is running much nicer. Changes all come when they should and throttle response is decent. No booting today though. Not with Teddy the Malinois riding in the back. Pissing off a retired Police dog seems less than wise.

Hadn't realised how much things had dropped off over a summer of (mostly) shopping runs of 4 miles each way (ish). Decent bit of motorway run due on Saturday so we will see how he reacts to that.

For now I'm going with the adaptive systems getting out of kilter.

Clive

Made time for half an hours worth of Italian Tune-up which seems to have bought things back more or less under control.

Slightly scary as Crowborough is not only at No 1 on the list of roads to do for the "Driving with Eyes Wide Shut Club" but also the newly formed "20 is Plenty Everywhere Fraternity" with the executive committees clearly having a joint run this afternoon to confirm things. Not ideal environment for booting a P38.

The beast was very unhappy about kicking down the first couple of tries but after the fourth time of asking it swept happily up to 5,000 before changing. Ordinary booting had a few stumbles initially around the 4,000 rpm ish but it would push through. After half a dozen tries it seems pretty much back to what it was. Still seems to be a bit iffy on letting go of lock up and not as spritely above 70 as I think it used to be.

All in all it seems that the adaptive set-up in the gear change control had gotten its knickers firmly twisted and gone into Great-Grandad mode.

Clive