Looks like SpeedyHen will do these Brooklands books at near as dammitt £38 for the Workshop Manual and £36 for the Parts Book which is decent value considering how many pages there are.
But the look inside view on Amazon suggests that the meat is printed at two pages to a landscape format sheet. So pretty much half scale which won't help legibility and, probably, makes a hollyhock of the page organisation.
Got a couple or three Brooklands books myself and print quality is pretty crap at best. And don't mention the pictures. Clearly direct photoset pages from "camera on post" film. Heck most of the photos in my Norton Rotaries Limited Edition Extra couldn't have been worse if they'd done the James Bond thing with a Minox and desk light! For nigh on £40 a pop I'd want the manual and parts book done right and nothing I've ever seen from Brooklands gives me that nice warm fuzzy "its gonna be good" feeling.
I like the look of what Sloth has done. Maybe better with more, smaller comb bindings than just 3 big ones. Some sort of volume ID on the comb would help too. Will those Brother/Dymo et al hand held thermal marker tapes stay put? Nice thing about the ring binders I found is full width and length clear pockets on front and back to take proper contents details. Hadta use that stiff almost card paper tho' cos ordinary paper wouldn't slide all the way down the spine.
Clive
Yup the binding & putting together bit at home is a real double ball ache. Home printing is just a single ball ache, unless you have a high volume printer with duplex capability. Started out doing the few pages as I needed them too then said "Stuff it. Do it right." and did the lot.
Single pages in clear wallets do pretty much double the space needed but its so nice in that things really do lay flat and its safe to plonk something on open pages to stop the wind blowing things around when working outside. Frankly if I'm gonna have a ball ache job I'll get my moneys worth out of the suffering and do it proper like. Done the chase a page round the garden bit a time or two. Both when a paperback bound manual disintegrated and when a loose leaf one lost a page or three.
Tempting link but at 70 drinking vouchers! An hour every night will get a DIY effort done, eventually. Hafta prioritise as works pension doesn't go all that far. Car lift is this years ambition methinks.
Clive
Now he offers!
Last years "wear the LaserJet 4MP+ out" project was to print out all of the P38 Workshop and Electrical Trouble Shooting manuals. I filled 8 four ring binders mostly 1 1/2" nominal but one bigger 2" one 'cos that was what I had. Three binders for each volume of the workshop manual, two for the electrical troubleshooting. Realistically a touch crowded, would have been better if I'd had enough of the wider ones to do them all.
I don't care for direct hole punching of the paper for this sort of thing so each double sided sheet is in its own glass clear pouch. Oily fingermarks just wipe off. I found EuroOffice 5 star pouches to be of adequate quality and not silly expensive in boxes of 100. Vertical alignment of the holes is a touch variable but name brands are 5 or more times the price and little better. Pouches mean that the odd mis-feed, miscount or inadvertently doing only one side is easily corrected for by slipping another sheet in. Takes ages on your own. Doing more than about 40 pages at time is asking for trouble. Its very easy to end up with inconsistent first and last page placement. I cocked up about 100 pages in one set. Put them in anyway figuring I could live with it the a couple of weeks later ripped the lot out for a do-over.
Whilst I was at it I filled two more binders. One with all the Nanocom instructions and one with useful things gleaned from t'net. Mostly BECM and EAS related. That will grow.
About 2 ft of shelf space.
This years project is to pull all the parts book stuff off Lrcat. Already done Axles and Suspension section as I needed to sort out full set of bushes. Currently a Word file but it will all go to PDF eventually.
Clive
Guess it was made on a cheap CNC 2D bender. Manually setting the twist and distance where the bend plane changes gives lots of room to get it wrong.
Never got the economics of this smallish production aftermarket stuff. I've thought that the speed and accuracy of a proper 3D bender would squeeze 2D tech right out of the market despite the higher cost of the machine.
Clive.
Got Grabber HTS on mine which seem pretty decent in light to moderate snow, quiet enough that I can't really hear road noise over wind and lasting well so far. C wet grip rating which is fine the way I drive.
Wouldn't touch an AT of any sort with a barge, let alone the pole. Wet grip rating of most sizes is F which is risky on a 2 ton car. Local tyre place put a set of AT somethings on her ladyships L322. Serious credit card damage followed by endless complaints of insufficient grip. Not poxy surprised now I've actually checked the ratings. Absolutely not madame lead foot compatible. Last time I'll trust their judgement. On Vredstein Quatrac now which she likes.
Clive
Orangebean flagged this one up on the 2002 Vogue Restro thread :-
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2002-Land-Rover-Range-Rover-P38-Vogue-SE-Very-Low-Mileage-59k-FSH/352222677323? but is it blue or green
If I weren't so far down the mid-life improvements route on mine that blue beast would be seriously tempting as it ticks all the boxes including LPG. Theoretically bit spendy but loads of miles left at normal servicing schedules so good on a £ per anticipated mile basis. Not stupidly far away too.
I see E-Bay has several low mileage late P38 up at the moment like
and
Seems to make something of an economic nonsense of doing serious mid life work on a car at 2 or 3 times the mileage.
Clive
gordonjcp wrote:
What I thought about was getting a set of small inline NRVs and turning them down on a lathe to fit inside the valve block where the "normal" NRVs go, with a groove to hold an O-ring at each end to seal the gap and hold it in place.
Something like these babies perhaps :- https://www.cambridgereactordesign.com/miniaturecheckvalves/#close . No great issue to make a carrier the right size for one of the small tubular ones. As they are complete units we don't have to worry about seat condition. May be a bit spendy.
The common, economically priced, off the shelf check valves for pneumatics and fluidics control applications are made to take push in nylon tube like our air suspension so tend to be too big. Smallest ones are for 4 mm tube and, typically, are 9 or 10 mm Ø overall. Too much to turn down methinks. Ordinary miniature ones start at 1/8 BSP thread so way too big.
Need to watch the crack pressure. Many of the process control variety have very high, 'hundreds of PSI, crack pressure which really won't do. I think around 7 or 8 psi is normal for pneumatic / fluidics control type valves which should be OK.
Need to verify flow rates too. Should have looked more closely at the valve block when I had mine apart but I presume standard is a simple O ring on a flat seat style lifting into a sufficiently big pipe so as not seriously restrict airflow.
Clive
Three pieces looks to be the way its done. Point, wire and rectangular end piece.
$64,000 question is does a mullered point mean a mullered seat underneath which also needs re-working. If so we need some way to re-finish the seat. May not be possible if the design relies on the anodising to provide a sufficiently hard face.
Looking at Morats self dis-assembled version I suspect the pointy bit is simply held on to the keep-it-together wire with loctite or similar engineering adhesive. If it is loctite then a bit of heat will shift it just fine. Looks as if the top end of the wire just goes through the hole in the flat part and is bonked flattish to stop it coming back out.
Brass should do for the pointy end. Only potentially tricky bit is if there is a recessed seat for the spring on the backside of the point. Hopefully not as those little back facer type tools are a tricky grind and easy to break.
Realistically might as well make 50 as make one or two. Time to see if that capstan attachment in the too good to bin cupboard actually fits my Smart & Brown 1024 VSL. Maybe I should have grabbed that Britan! (http://www.lathes.co.uk if you want to know what the old fool is blathering on about!).
Clive
.
Is this a hint that its about time Clive got round to tooling up and making a batch of new pointy bits to recondition the valve insert doobies?
Theoretically I have some uncommitted time next year.
Clive
No 2 on running the M reg one if its basically acceptable and sorting Micheal properly. Taken 40 odd years for the penny to drop but now firmly convinced that do it properly, do it once is always the cheap way overall. And my short cuts (bodges) were generally considered three classes above most folks.
Last time I had owt to do with that sort of swop the new second hand motor decided to get iffy about 2 months down the road and mate in question had to find yet another engine. OK only an Escort van so changing the engine was just a matter of unbolting, balancing on a trolley jack to slide it out then passing a doubled rope underneath and hopping up onto the wings to lift it out between us. Ended up re-building engine no 3 to ensure GF and her two Newfoundlands were happy. Time and cost spent faffing about with a car to car swop and shifting the carcass would more than have covered a refresh level rebuild anyway.
Clive
Had a quick gander at the website.
You think that's bad.
How about £5 change out of £ 33,000 for 4.6 Classic LSE. Not even a soft dash! Makes that fake Royal special edition look almost reasonable. Can just see a poor angle view of the cheap engraved /printed label on the dashboard in one shot. Amazing what you can do with double sided sticky foam! Would you drive a car with something like that screaming at the passenger "Dealer took him for a ride!". Um, nope.
Skimming through the years and pictures throws up some very odd juxtapositions with GEMs engines shown for far too modern vehicles.
Realistically £6,000 to 7,000 for 30,000 miles or so vehicles further down is expensive but makes some kind of cack handed sense if you want put 50,000 miles or so on it. Around £3,000 might buy you a good 100,000 mile ish UK one but you will spend the difference on the mid-life improvements program over 50,000 miles so its pretty much a wash.
Mind you if what my mate Paul "I trained as a toolmaker" told me about the Porsche collector / fancier market is true nothing P38 related even makes it onto the cheap end of that scale.
Clive
Orangebean wrote:
the joy of owning and driving a P38 diesel for only £195 :)
"Joy" and "P38 diesel" do not belong in the same sentence. Unless my dictionaries are sadly in error.
Caravan dealer. Hmmn.
Man bought it cheap to do collections'n deliveries. Ran it with no servicing until it dropped. Then abandoned it in the local boozer. No way is it just heater plugs. It will fire up on three good plugs if its much above freezing. Realistically its a £1,500 car even if running perfectly. Back in the day he'd be buying rusty Transits.
My view is that a P38 is gonna eat £4,000 - £5,000 and fair bit of quality garage time over and above normal servicing if you do any half decent miles unless you select and time the purchase very carefully. Are you feeling lucky! So its just a matter of doing enough miles to justify the spend. Still seem to be 100,000 mile (ish) examples in decent nick popping up regularly in the £2,000 - £3,000 range. Which is where I'd be looking.
In round numbers my W plate 4.0 HSE was £3,000 in 2012 with 70,000 miles, about £2,000 in non normal service bits and extra thingies. £2,500 in service and normal running stuff including tax & insurance. Coming up to 90,000 miles now. Probably still get £3,000 back. Call it a grand a year plus fuel to run it. Not too shabby.
Clive
Interesting reading https://mattersoftesting.blog.gov.uk/giving-the-right-advice/ its quite clear that advisories are supposed to refer to "items that any items which are near to, but which have not yet reached the point of test failure". Some of the tester comments beneath are, um, illuminating.
Flaking paint round the back of the chassis seems to be a standard fit on the later P38s by now. But has anyone heard of a ordinary road use one failing due to corrosion actually eating through vital things. I've peered under some pretty ropey old ones and no sign of structural issues. Minor brackets well past their best yes but not visible chassis & suspension parts.
I've got a similar stack on mine which I put up with for walk round the corner convenience.
Clive
Of course the thing about a P38 is you have the service schedule, the 100,000 mile fixit list, the 150,000 mile fixit list (engine really) and the 200,000 mile fixit list then, basically, repeat. If you are doing the miles fixit on schedules rather than when it needs attention is affordable compared to paying depreciation on an equivalent newer, much lower mileage, vehicle with reasonable prognosis for 100,000 miles without £££ worth of faults.
Deja Vue all over again as I've just suffered three quarters of an hour on the dog'n bone with her ladyship making the right noises over significant L322 TD6 content. "Roo-Roo is expensive to run but I've looked at ............. hate them all" record with stuck needle. I think I've finally got it across to her that now she has spent the big bucks on front suspension she only has to save up for the back end and gearbox for it to be good for another 100,000. Which will be cheaper than depreciation.
Wimmin. Told her to get a P38 and put it on LPG but no "I don't like the P38 and I've researched the TD6. It's ideal for me. Love Roo-Roo to bits.".
Riiight so thirsty, overweight, underpowered with a complex weak suspension, incomprehensible electrics and grenade gearbox is good.
The more I have to do with modern cars the more I realise just how good a P38 fundamentally is.
Clive
North of 200,000 miles tho'. Would make me go Hmmn due to potential of other important bits getting towards EoL.
Even on my puny 4,000 miles a year. Grumpy ole guys don't get out much!
Clive
Problem with polybushes is that they basically don't cope with roll or its asymmetrical cousins twist and skew.
P38 has pure leading and trailing link suspension with solid axles. Calling the front links radius arms is just a different name.
Consider replacing all the bushes with solid pins in metal bearings. Suspension will go up and down OK but it can't roll, twist or skew without staring things. Not even with rose joints at the arm to body connection. The rubber bushes provide the flexibility to allow such movement. The long links mean that the axles have to divine their connection to the car at considerable distance but do allow the body to float along fairly independently relative to axles and minimise the twisting movements in the bushes. The long, rubber bushed links means the inherent transverse location between car and axles is very poor. Hence the Panhard Rod links front and back which tie the axles to the car from side to side.
Panhard Rod links tie things together side to side pretty well but the geometry is inherently infelicitous and pure rotation at the bush is impossible. The longer the link the less the angles involved but either the pin has to shift away from central within the bush or the rod itself needs to distort. Polybushes do have tiny bit of inherent flexibility but its far less than rubber. Only reason you can get away with them is the sheer length of the arms which minimise the the angles involved. It doesn't begin to work as designed but at least the bushes don't tear out in nothing flat. At the front the Panhard rod ones are most seriously overloaded and will fail first. I'd be unsurprised to discover that the bushes actually wear sloppy quite quickly so things can wobble around enough to cope with geometric variations but not so much that the steering can't cope. Behaviour of the compress to fit axle front mounting bushes is interesting as it stops the sort of horrid front end behaviour associated with old fashioned leaf sprung dead axle cars. Imagine P38 on a Series Land Rover suspension set up. Yikes! maybe not.
Not quite so bad at the back because the trailing link has some inherent flexibility to help reduce strain on the bushes. No direct steering loads either.
When you get down to it the whole Range Rover suspension arrangement is a very clever and sophisticated design despite its apparent simplicity. Polybushes are nearly as bad as coil springs for mucking up suspension really. Pressing on in a coil sprung, polybushed P38 with uprated dampers is probably an "interesting" experience.
The whole polybush thing comes from track racing where cars are set up with hard suspension to minimise movement and, especially, roll. No issues with geometrically proper systems like double wishbones, watt linkages et al which work fine with solid pins and rose joints anyway but the minor compliance of polys makes assembly easier. But when you come to saloon cars and less geometrically correct systems the inevitable compliance of rubber works agains the rock hard suspension set-up hence polybushes do have real advantages.
Clive
£232 from Direct Line for me, albeit limited mileage. Fourth year now and up maybe £30 over that time so not too bad. Direct Line renewals seem to come back around the 3 rd or 4 th cheapest quote from comparison sites. My "can't be bothered to switch" limit is around £30. Got the comparison sites set-up to E-Mail me when things are due so thats quick'n easy. Life is too short to futz around looking for the very best deal and verifying there are no catches buried in the small print.
Thanks for the head up on Saga bike insurance. Maybe I'll give them a try now Asure have pulled out and dumped me on Devitt. Devitt and Hastings not being my favourites as they've dropped me and folk I know seriously in the kitty litter in the past. Trouble with Saga is they don't have delete on their E-Mail. Lord knows what they'd make of my near unique Norton tho'.
Clive
I'm impressed with the results. Hafta give one a try soon.
Clive
So which £20 steam cleaner has the official BPSM P38-Safe rating? Or should I just dig out the Earlex Steam Wallpaper Stripper thingy from the back of the attic and see what other bits are in the box?
Wouldn't have the nerve to point one anywhere near car bits, especially if it might hit electrics, without re-assurance from folks who have been there and done it.
Still chasing my teeny leak problem. Fix one, its good for a month then another appears. I figure its been run with magic sealer junk which is slowly wearing out after two coolant changes in my hands. Guess its time to join the "flushed my heater matrix group" although all seems to function adequately. Leak is more irritating than serious. Basically splash a bit of coolant in when I top up the screen wash.
When I did my throttle plate heater and hoses I found the hoses were sufficiently cracked in places for coolant to have oozed through the hose along the crack. Original hoses so after 16 / 17 odd years I guess they'd done their stint.
Clive
Age related problem. Umpteen hot to cold thermal cycles on a large, shallow, thread in aluminium alloy will eventually loosen it. Doesn't help that there is a temperature gradient along the thread too.
Aluminium alloys do funny things when it comes to stress and thermal cycling. Something the designers have to be well aware of when choosing materials for seriously designed things. Sort of thing that bites you on the ass several years down the line when, as with rocker covers, only basic design like cheap, casts well and can be painted are considered.
Alloy wheels still worry me as fatigue life of the materials used is both finite and seriously shortened if the folk who make them don't do it right. Gawd knows what effect back street repairs have. Nice fat P38 tyres mean such is probably no worry for us but the modern rubber band tyred breed suffer badly when kerbed and I'm certain that many are repaired when they should have been scrapped.
Clive