Be nice to know why LR changed the connectors.

As they are both two pin connectors its possible that the 2001 airbag trigger outputs are incompatible with the '98 - '99 airbags so the connector sizes were changed to prevent mis-matched connections.

Clive

L322. Engineered by BMW, built by Ford. Nuff said!

Stupidly over complicated in all the wrong places. Lots of fundamentally bad engineering bodged round enough to work. What gronoff thought an electric handbrake was good idea on a vehicle with off road pretensions. Or any vehicle for that matter.

If the official unofficial kid sisters' TD6 is typical, needs a small fortune spent on looking after it. Like £1,200 in 8 months to sort a front suspension knock. About a grand of that I won't see again! Her habit of looking for cheaper servicing, in this case via an Indy who I don't think is really up to such complex vehicles doesn't help. Thought she'd learned her lesson some years back after smithereening my VFR750 Honda at about 120 mph. Late for work and cheap oil filter collapsed! According to her speed limits don't apply to blondes on motorcycles. No great loss. Piece of crap in my opinion even if Johnny Harris (who looked after Joey Dunlops bikes) said it was good one.

When she got worried about her Discovery 300TDi after a "well regarded Indy" forgot to properly tighten the sump plug so it dumped all its oil in mid flight I told her to find a decent late P38 and I'd do a Gilbertd on it. Top hatted engine, lpg and everything sorted properly for the next 150,000 miles. Nope "I don't like the P38, the L322 is much prettier.". There are mistakes and there are expensive mistakes. That one being a really expensive mistake in my view. Yet she loves it to bits. Wimmin!

Concerning engines nobody has ever satisfactorily explained to me why the Rover V8 couldn't have been given modern 4 valve cylinder heads and appropriate camshafts to get sensible economy out of the beast. How difficult could that be on basic push rod motor. BMW V8 may be acceptable for a while but Vanos system and other daftness is just a grenade waiting to blow once the miles get serious. Design is such that it can't be sensibly rebuilt which is not something I approve of.

Clive

Last pre-engaged starter motor problem I got involved with turned out to be issues with the contacts inside the engagement solenoid which actually switch power to the starter motor. A fair few years back but contacts were well burnt as I recall it. We surmised that the engagement solenoid wasn't managing full travel so the connection was iffy and the contacts suffered. As with yours hitting it fixed it for a bit. No obvious causes so the motor was scrapped.

Horribly messy job cleaning out all the carbon dust. Don't do it bare handed or it will be a week before SWMBO lets you eat at the table again! First time through it will take lots longer than it ought if you intend to make a proper job with a full clean out and re-lubrication.

Clive.

Agree on track, and bulb holder if its in one, tarnish being a likely cause. Over various vehicles I reckon cleaning up was needed about half the time to get a new bulb going. You'd have thought that if the old one made good contact for ages until it blew a new one would just slot in and go. But Mr Gremlin says "No.".

These days I clean things every time however good they look.

Clive

UV kit is your friend then. I got a Ring one off E-Bay, about £12 - £13 with the torch. Bottles of nostrum are about half that if you have a UV torch.

Instructions say to put it in and run engine for 20 minutes then look for evidence. Not so sure about that. I just got loads of little splatters all over the engine bay. Nice big easily seen path when the failing pump seal did let a tablespoon or two size puddle's worth out. Next time I shall start looking after about 5 minutes.

I drained out the radiator, mixed the dye in with the coolant and re-filled via a filter to collect all the entrained bits so it was properly mixed to start with rather than relying on it working its way down from the header tank. Syringing out the header might well have been enough tho'.

Clive

Primary purpose of core plugs is to fill up the holes left in the casting so you can extract the sand, or whatever, core used to define the inside parts of the casting. Mostly waterways. Drive in plug is just the easiest way of doing the job. Make it the right shape and it has enough clearance to slip in easily yet a swift blow in the middle will cause it to expand evenly to grip all round for a nice seal. Popping out for pressure relief on freezing or very serious overheating is an incidental and very unreliable benefit.

Hate to say it but your droplets look very similar to the ones I had when spending 4 years, but only 12,000 miles, chasing a small water loss. In my experience unless the leak is pretty big, as in stop at regular intervals to top up size, visible droplets and tracks have more to do with under bonnet airflow and where the fan blows stuff than the actual location of the real leak. I fixed several small leaks that ought to have been about right for the coolant lost to little effect.

Even a good scrub down and a UV kit didn't really solve things although I got very suspicious of the water-pump. But I "knew" that was good cos it got a good inspection when I changed the (bodged) waiter pump gasket during a crankshaft seal change. Eventually it dumped enough overnight to be really sure that it was the pump seal. With 20/20 hindsight it was clear that the pump seal had been failing for a long time. Those things are pressure loaded so it would hold up once the car was up to temperature and the system properly pressurised but would leak during warm-up. So a larger, but still not huge, short term leak looked like a small all the time one.

Clive

Hard change is probably just the ECU re-learning things and generally getting its act together with the other electronics. If possible it might be worth checking that all the gearbox ECU inputs are sensibly central within the normal operating ranges. If its seeing an input right up to one end of the tolerance there may not be enough adaptive adjustment to get a smooth change with a newly re-built gearbox having nice tight clutches. On a well worn box the general sloppiness could be enough to absorb the harshness.

I'd be wanting to cast a beady eye on the engine torque reduction and road speed - output shaft speed dialogs. Maybe see what it does in Sport mode as the more aggressive operating set up puts more demands on the torque reduction and speed related control system.

A real internal mechanical clunk is, of course, seriously bad news.

Clive

no10chris wrote:

They do water pump spanner and holders on eBay cheap enough, although must admit I’ve never needed the holder, a good wallop normally shocks it enough, especially as yours has been off I think your have no problems.

Depends how its been put on. Mine had clearly been hammered on good and tight. So much so that I had serious doubts as to getting it off even with the right tools. Started by carefully selecting the best pair of flats. Was one mighty heave away from some serious engineering to produce a clamp on, guaranteed never to slip, spanner device to teach it manners. Looking at the nut I was fairly lucky that the best pair of flats, which weren't that wonderful, held up against the force applied.

Over the years I've taken a certain morbid interest in seeing how far into my car Mr Unprofessional Professional mechanic has been. Regrettably many P38s have been through the "serviced too much on the cheap" process so you have to look carefully and be wary.

Clive

If you are going to do the water pump probably sensible to change the front crankshaft oil seal at the same time. Only a little more dismantling.

Proper tools to shift the viscous fan make life far easier. If nothing else you can feel if its shifting or not before damaging the nut. All the short cut, use what I have and hit it type methods risk damaging it if they don't work first time. I gave the shock it with a normal spanner one go then bought the spanner from Britpart and made the other tool. Britpart spanner actually fits and cheap enough not to be worth the futzing around measuring and making. Nut was sadly unhappy so it got built up with weld and hexagon re-machined. Probably would have been marginally quicker to make from scratch but I didn't feel like screw cutting that week.

Made (yet) anther head for my 4 ft stick pulley holding tool to keep the crank still whilst dealing with the nut. Official tool to expensive, after market ones expensive and don't look wonderful so I sorted one properly.

LPG makes it as cheap to run as any other car. If I did serious miles mine would get a conversion despite the nearest LPG being 20 odd miles away but at 3,000 miles per year petrol costs are no great worry.

Adopt the "do it once do it right philosophy" and old car blues won't be an issue. Its not a Morry Minor or Ford Cortina so fixing things one immediate problem at a time isn't going to fly. Too much going on under the hood. You have to deal in sub-systems.

You will need diagnostics. Get a Nanocom.

Clive

Given the number of folk who, like me, do use Copaslip on wheel studs, bolts and flanges if there really were a problem you'd know. Wheels would be falling off by the truckload everywhere! Obviously not so the whole thing is clearly a non issue in practice despite the multitude of folk enjoying themselves arguing about it on t'net, in the pub and on garage forecourts.

I know actually looking up the relevant engineering data is cheating but a quick look at the Copaslip short form advertising data sheet illustrates the point.

The short form of the standard thread equation relating torque to clamping pressure in metric units is T = KDP
where T = Torque (N.m), D = Diameter (m), P = Clamping force (N), K = Nut factor. For practical purposes K is the co-efficient of friction between the two threaded components. Certainly so in this case.

The Copaslip data at :- https://www.molyslip.co.uk/products/anti-seize-and-assembly/copaslip/ has list of K values for for several materials coated with Copaslip. Steel on steel as would be appropriate to wheel nuts is given as 0.12.

The Roymech website at :- http://www.roymech.co.uk/Useful_Tables/Tribology/co_of_frict.htm includes a useful table of coefficients of friction for threaded steel fasteners. Generally 0.12 to 0.18 for mechanic cleaned steel fasteners so not vastly different to Copaslip coated ones. Certainly the maximum 6 % difference is well within the safety factors of rational engineering for load carrying structures. Basically all Copaslip will do is to stabilise the co-efficient of friction at the low end of normal range. What may be surprising is how little difference lubrication makes to the measured figures. Reason is that pressures in the thread of any reasonably tight joint are so high that any normal liquid phase lubricant is squeezed out of the load bearing side so its near enough pure metal to metal contact. Of course the moment the pressure is released the lubricant can get back in so the nut spins on really easily. Bit different if you use a solid lubricant such graphite or moly powder. Some of the modern synthetics have enough extreme pressure performance to really upset things too.

Perhaps surprisingly Copaslip is only around 15% copper, the rest is a thin oil with thickening agents so it behaves like grease when not under pressure. When put under pressure the carrier squidges out so the joint is made via a very thin layer of pretty pure copper. More or less a mechanical plating process. The anti size properties come from the relatively low shear strength of pure copper allowing the "plating" layer to shear if everything else is gummed up.

Realistically, unless you put stupid amounts on so the carrier can't squidge out, Copaslip makes no difference.

Clive

The extending bars are great for getting the nuts off but not so good at putting on. I doubt if you were much over 50 ft lb (if that) using it in short mode. Even a decent heave on mine in extended mode doesn't take it up to 80. Maybe 70 and change on good day. But I'll swear blind that I'm pulling harder on the extending bar than I do on Mr Britools finest.

According to a race prep mate slightly loose nuts are good way to get jammed wheels. Fretting under load changes rather than movement I guess.

Clive

50 Ω at ambient sounds very low. Judging by this list : https://www.omega.com/temperature/Z/pdf/z256-257.pdf a reading of 130°C on the meter for that resistance would be pretty typical if an "ordinary" Negative Temperature Coefficient thermistor were used.

As Marty says you generally expect around 10 K Ω somewhere in the normal(ish) ambient temperature range, say 0°C to 30°C for an ordinary NTC thermistor. Although the shape of the response curve is pretty much the same for most types there is considerable variation in actual values as the detail construction of the device is altered to put the most linear part of the resistance variation in the temperature range where its most wanted.

But some, like the one you have are very different. See 1DA500J and 1DA500K about half way down this page : https://www.ametherm.com/thermistor/disc-and-chip-ntc-thermistors for one specified as 50 Ω at 25°C needing a 6 volt supply. Probably not what you bought but similar. I'd have thought that would be pretty specialised device needing bit of hunting to find. Not something you'd just buy off the shelf.

Clive

Soldering or sweating a patch on will certainly be strong enough. But once again the issue is going to be getting through the oxide layer for good bond on the aluminium. Had a truly miserable time about 20 years back with a roll of flux cored aluminium solder got from RS components. Presumably the proper stuff. Certainly expensive enough.

Two pieces of nice clean alloy with a 90° bend on one for the joint. Big ass electric soldering iron for the heating bit, tip about 1" x 1 1/2". First try didn't even try to hold. Fourth one was messy as hell but fairly strong. Fifth one neat and really strong! As I recall things the instructions said use an iron to tin both sides and sweat together. Open flame verboten. Still got the roll somewhere but they will probably be shovelling snow in hell before I get desperate enough for another go.

Wonder how they fix the flat alloy brackets on to the pipe?

Or maybe there is a suitable glue about these days.

Be a bit more confident with something like MuggyWeld 5 which has a flux to ensure the substate is clean rather than the retail offerings which rely on scrubbing and scraping. YouTube is impressive https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niFcXRMa3d4. Its understood that all other soldering / sweating / brazing processes go better with flux so can't see why aluminium should be different. Some of the YouTube videos of MuggyWeld show good results on apparently seriously grotty pipes. Dunno where to get it in the UK tho'.

Clive

Extrapolating from my memory of doing larger castings the major difficulty when using the magic braze-welding sticks on thin material is likely to be controlling the temperature of the substrate.

Given the good thermal conductivity of aluminium it ought not to be too difficult to keep the surface of a large lump at, or slightly above, the right temperature without melting everything. But I did come close before getting the knack and realising that it doesn't need to have as much heat poured in as you might think. With a thin pipe there is very little alloy to absorb and transmit heat so the difference between "temperature OK" and "Ooops, melted it" will be small in the practical terms of how much to turn the torch flame up, how close to hold it and how long to heat for. Pity there are no colour changes, like when heat treating steel, or indicator substances, like soap on hard alloy sheet to indicate its hot enough to bend, to help. Wonder if there is some mileage in getting creative with a cheap IR thermometer when practicing. Something I might try if I ever use the stuff again.

Up to a point it will get under the oxide layer and any minor contamination. Floats up as a sort of slag on top which has to be removed with the stainless steel wire brush and/or abrasive paper provided once things have cooled off. Still have to get under the oxide or contamination for the bonding to start the process. As I recall it the temperatures involved with oxide or contaminated surfaces tend to be higher and its all rather harder. Once you have that first layer on it all goes much easier. Equivalent to tinning copper, brass or steel before soldering I guess.

Yet another addition to my list of jobs and techniques I need to do 3 times before getting the hang of it enough to know whats going on. 4 th time lucky might still be a mess but at least I'd know why.

Clive

I've used the sort of low temperature aluminium braze-welding sticks mentioned in the first post before. Maybe 30 years ago. Lumiweld brand I think. The stuff does work but things have to be scrupulously clean and getting reliable results is bit of an art form. I only repaired a couple of lumpy castings. Zilch confidence in successfully fixing pipes or thin material without plenty of practice.

Funnily enough what I used back then was said to be the new improved second generation material. The stuff seems to appear and disappear on the retail market in a fairly regular several year cycle with new band names each time round. Always the new improved second or third or (how far can you count) generation stuff far better than the last time it was popular.

Hmmn.

Nothing greatly magic about it. One component of the stick locally reduces the melting point of the aluminium alloy. So all (!) you have to do is to get the aluminium alloy hot enough to melt the stick onto it but not so hot that the underlaying material melts and a bond is formed. As always with aluminium there is the pesky detail of getting rid of the oxide film so metal to metal contact between the substrate and melting repair stick can occur. Stuff I used needed vigorous scratching with a stainless steel probe under the melted stick material to properly initiate bonding. Not too hard on a decent lump of casting but on thin sheet or pipe .... Samples in the video look far too clean for real life and are probably specially chosen materials too.

Gotta be a reason why this stuff isn't mainstream.

Clive

In the thread mentioned above by Gilbertd, Davew notes that a sticky link joint due to corrosion and lack of lubrication was the cause of his height sensor problems.

During the process of changing my front radius arms for a self reconditioned set I got to see four pivot pins. Only one of which was in anything like objectively acceptable condition with merely marginal, but still smooth, corrosion on the surface where some of the plating had worn off. The others were rough in greater or lesser degree with serous material wastage. The worst was down to about 1/8" thickness, not diameter as the remains were somewhat less than round. Far as I could see all the rusted out material was still in the bush. Sort of ferrous oxide gravel.

New stainless steel replacements made and fitted which should fix things for a while.

I've often wondered how folk without machine shop facilities manage?

Actuator rods on the sensors were OK. So just got lubricated. Rear sensor links show some corrosion but that can wait for now.

Clive

Now't wrong with any of the swivels and ball joints on mine, 2000 model year 4.0 HSE with around 90,000 miles up, but rubber covers are all ageing out. Bottom drivers side swivel is totally shagged. Top drivers side and drivers side track rod end very unhappy. As are some of the suspension bushes. So they are all getting done.

All protesting mightily about removal too! Shoulda known better than to buy a car that had lived close, but not that close, to the seaside even though all looked wonderful back then.

Definitely a Masochistic May so far.

Clive

Nanocom is the one for mere mortals. Things it can't do are for experts only which you really don't want to be messing about with as getting it wrong can need major league effort to sort. Diagnostics is not somewhere to skimp. When you need it you need it and need it right.

Forget the rest. Cheap general purpose with a few bells and whistles ones like the iCarsoft don't cover enough. Britpart Lynx looks comprehensive but can't, in my experience, be trusted and there appears to be no commitment to continued support. I got one of the original ones trusting in promised upgrades which never turned up. Darn thing locked car in transport mode too.

RSW EAS unlock works treat and I'm pretty confident that anything else Storey offers offered will be pretty good but he is one man band which inevitably makes life harder.

Clive

Well that job is not going well at all. Major league issues in releasing stuff. One radius arm bolt actually came out!

Mr MoT Man insisted that the air tank was too rusty last year so that had to come out for refurb one to be fitted. One bolt wasn't going to shift. Fortunately it was the lower rear one not upper rear one. Probably a body off job to cut that one out! Tried a number of things with similar results to Mr Jerome K Jeromes trio of riverine explorers at tea time taking the obligatory think and simmer down breaks. Three days too late I tumbled on the right answer. Got a cheap electric band-filer from LiDL a while back which ground off the remains of the head nicely. Hammering undersize socket on, drilling out, chiselling et al all failed dismally. Impressed with that band-filer. Ones I'd used before were less than inspiring.

Final drop out tomorrow and hopefully all back in by tea time. Ha! Getting too old for under car on axle stands work.

Getting close up'n personal its clear that swivel joints, track rod and drag link need doing too. Two rubbers split, others not good. Island have Lemforder assemblies in stock at reasonable prices so that should all be with me by Tuesday. Not optimistic about the tension collets on the swivel hubs staying in re-useable condition either as they are heavily rusted. On 3 day order from Island too so fingers crossed the old ones don't get damaged in the swivel removal process. Its all horribly rusty down there. Whats the DIY method for setting them in the right place if I do have to fit new ones?

MoT booked for May 26 th so gotta get skates on.

Clive

As Gilbertd says it all comes out quite easily when you know but there are gotchas for the first timer.

Before you decide what to buy its worth spending an evening doing some "parts book" homework on LRcat (http://new.lrcat.com, select P38, section K and choose from list to get pretty picture) to see what all the bits look like, how many screws there are and, more or less, where they hide. There are a few screws you can't easily see and various plastic tabs needing unhooking before parts can be lifted away. Centre console in particular.

OK its Captain Obvious suggestion but make sure you have a selection of plastic tubs or whatever (margarine, ex-curry take away et al) to keep the screws safe and separate.

Clive