Gilbertd wrote:

I've never seen anyone use a torque wrench on a sump plug, most people just do it up tight......

Bounces up and down.

"Me, me, me".
Set rather lower than factory theory too. Always anneal copper washers. Even if brand new.

Especially on alloy sumps. Don't know enough swear words to properly express my loathing for rethreading sump drain holes when Gorilla Garages Inc have hauled the plug up to one micro-newton short of stripping so the verdammn thread comes out on the plug. Sorting out a repair bush thread compatible with the OEM plug can demand a certain malevolent creativity.

Clive

Chrisp38

Thanks for the tip.
A bit of extra space would still be handy but as it was just doable with my tools I never bothered to look into moving the coolant tank. Frankly if I'd twigged it just clipped in I almost certainly would have shifted it. Probably just assumed it was bolted in via a flange underneath so hoses would need removing to shift it.

RAVE spoils us in many ways because it's so good that following the words and music just works (pity Mr Haynes wasn't paying attention). With the coolant tank so easy to shift and space so tight I'd have expected a note on the "unclip coolant tank and move over for easier access" lines.

Clive

Never needed to move or cut anything the three times I've done mine. Getting the pipe on does require verbal encouragement.

I use a Williams split hex ring spanner officially designed for brake unions, the split makes it easy to pass over the pipe. Head is smaller than an open end and the angle of mine is favourable for clearance.

Clive

Blast of switch cleaner aerosol into the switch aperture and a few presses on the control panel appears to have fixed mine.

Mine gets used about twice year at most so contacts had plenty of time to get dirty. I suspect regular exercise of all the centre console switches, once a month or so might be good idea to keep the contacts clean and all working. Yet another of my good intentions that doesn't happen!

Clive

The wire is a pest. Can't recall if the connector is small enough to go through a ring spanner of the right size for the hexagon. If it isn't best to get a proper split ring spanner or split socket with offset drive so as to have good purchase on the sensor body.

The big imponderable is how tight years of heating and cooling have made the sensor in its thread. I'd need to be confident that it's not gone super tight before trusting to an open end.

Bought a relatively inexpensive Hilka branded set of two offset square drive split sockets to pull the Lambda sensor on my Yamaha GTS which fitted far better than I expected given the price and worked well. Set comprises one 1/2" drive and one 3/8" drive. But that Yamaha is silly low mileage, despite being 30 years old, and the sensors are known to come out easily if factory fitted.

I'd expect the P38 sensors to put up more of a fight so would push the budget to cover a proper split ring spanner from a good make.

I was impressed with the Gedore ones I bought to do the oil coolers and pipes last year. £60 odd for two spanners isn't cheap but they fitted really well and got things undone without drama where an open ended spanner would almost certainly have distorted the hexagon unions. Gedore claim to make their spanners more accurately than other makes. Something I'm willing to believe on the evidence of that pair.

Clive

Harv
I'm pretty sure the hoses I fitted were supposed to be a decent aftermarket, priced that way for sure, but who knows when they just come loose in the delivery box with other odds'n sods. Full complement of single turn spring clips and the top set did have the H markings which may or may not have meant something.

Richard
Learned that thing about the spring clips having to be dead square maybe 40 or more years back. The embarrassing, knock on a door and beg for kettle of water, way! Had about 3 goes to get that one just so when I fitted the hose set. Learned how well enough to get it OK first time after changing the thermostat and it's been acceptable up until now.

The spring clip wasn't up to it on the stub of the Airtex water pump I used when the original died. Jubilee didn't quite do it either so that got a mikalor which sorted it. All in all a curse heavy process. Probably got another mikalor the right size in stock so maybe give that a try tomorrow as earliest a hose set can arrive will be around this time next week anyway. Or do the single use crimp up style work well in such areas. Not my favourite idea but I have a kit purchased for a customer job.

But I guess I should invest in a new set of factory hoses anyway. In my book a decade or so is a good life for "rubbery stuff" in general.

Clive

I've "always" had a water drip from the thermostat to water pump hose junction but its gotten much worse over the last couple of weeks. Now its stopped raining I can see its leaving serious evidence directly below the thermostat when parked up. Big panic when during Mondays under bonnet check showed the header tank level to be well down, maybe 1/2" deep at most, after no more than 100 (ish) miles since last look. Topped up, tank lev el holding up when cold but the hose to thermostat joint is still dripping.

Following my standard practice I changed the hoses immediately after buying the car. Reputable source but, as I recall things, unbranded. I was never totally happy with the stub fits but generally everything worked except for that darn drip. 11 years down the line I figure it's time for new hoses again so which breed to get. Genuine LandRover or are BritPart OK these days. The £90 difference will be worth it if it stops the drip.

The car got a new genuine thermostat about 5 years back so pretty sure the case on that isn't cracked.

Currently the hose clip on the offending joint is one of the single loop spring variety, as came with the hose set. Would a jubilee or mikalor type do a better job of sealing things? I'm not convinced about screw up clamps on plastic stubs as quite serious pressure can be generated. The spring type are supposed to maintain almost constant pressure when temperature variations lead to expansion and contraction of the plastic stubs. Which seems safer.

I guess I could just change the clip but if I'm gonna get a sleeve full of water I want my moneys worth.

Clive

Sheesh guys there are easier ways to commit suicide!

Ages ago was standing beside the right front corner of the car when the bag just let go all on its ownsome! One heck of a scary bang. Instant levitation and "that close" to needing clean pants.

Out of curiosity I did the maths as to how much energy was involved and how dangerous those things are if they let go in the open. Sobering, getting close to hand grenade without the shrapnel. Not quite as bad as an over-pressured tyre letting go, which has been known to kill, but absolutely not something to do for fun.

I guess dumping it in the lake, or big water tank, like the scuba folks do might bring the risks down.

Back in the day the firm wanted me to use 4,000 psi air and nitrogen so I got to sit through the safety videos.

Clive

Done.

Clive

As pretty much every car with a separate DSP amplifier is known to give problems in later life I cannot understand why none of the Far Eastern suppliers make an affordable generic "universal" replacement that can be programmed to match pretty much any car.

Fundamentally the output side of a DSP amp is simply a bunch of class D amplifiers each driving a single speaker over a pre-programmed frequency range. The input side is basically either just an analogue to digital converter if the head unit output is analogue or a simple digital pass through if the head unit output is already digital. The bit in the middle just chops things up to get the right amounts of the right frequencies out to the amplifier driving each speaker.

Not forgetting the all important modifications and twiddly bits en-route producing all the (inaudibly different) special effects needed to look good on the specification sheets. A car, even a large quiet car like the P38, is pretty much the poster child for poor listening environment. Hard to think of a worse location than the bottom of the door for speakers! About the only way to make something sound seriously different is to wreck any pretensions to sensible audio.

So all you need is an amplifier box with enough outputs to handle all your speakers, suitable wiring to connect the car controls to the box and a phone app to program things. My iPhone does a very nice job of correcting my totally crappy hearing into something half sensible, the world is silly noisy using Airpods in transparency mode, so something to program a generic DSP isn't unreasonable.

I imagine that coming up with the mucked up sounds just like the original (Harman Kardon?) box if you load up with half a million quids worth of audio spectrum analyser might be bit more challenging. But making something that works with a decent sound will be pretty trivial these days.

Far as I could see from occasional looks inside the box most of the DSP amps were made in a manner intended to conceal the fact that, engineering wise, they were cheap crap with lashings of specmanship to convince folk they were paying for a real deal.

To modify a sometime well known quote from Peter Walker, head honcho of Quad Audio in their glory days

"If electrons could read we'd have serious hysteria induced distortion."

Peter was referring to the outpourings of the Audiophile press and the adverts therein but it it seems equally relevant when applied to DSP and in car audio in general specifications.

Clive

Pete

Total current through LED and the BECM / CanBus defeat resistor is still significantly less than that through a normal bulb so heat dissipation is still rather less. As I recall it from when I added separate sense resistors to use simple LED bulbs in the reversing light the total current needed to tell the BECM that the bulb is OK is around 1/4 of that actually drawn by an normal bulb when illuminated. I think I played around with the resistor size so the BECM still noticed that there was no bulb fitted so, hopefully, a dead bulb would be flagged up.

Objectively it seems rather high but presumably there is reason why a much lower current wasn't considered satisfactory to confirm that a continuous circuit existed. Probably linked to the characteristics of the 4 terminal current monitoring transistors in the BECM that actually drive the lights.

Headlamp LEDs (now illegal) draw enough current for the BECM to accept them as being on anyway.

Clive

I used bit of cellulose thinners to shift some old tacky bits of glue. The orange stuff remnants scrubbed off fine with a stiff brush.

Don't be stingy with the stickum stuff and make sure you have plenty of overlap to pull round the edge. I only used one can of the Martrim glue and didn't allow enough overlap. 3 or 4 years on its coming unstuck again so redo is on this summers job list. Appeared to stick good and proper but it didn't last.

Rolled my material round an over length broom handle which made it much easier for two people to handle. If you possibly can get a third or even fourth helper. Pretty sure trying to do the job with insufficient assistance was a major reason for mine not turning out too well.

Don't breathe the glue fumes. Inspector Wasp buzzed over, settled in the middle and promptly keeled over. Not sure if a full 6 point landing was managed before expiry. Fortunately the touch was light enough not to stick.

Clive

Way back I fitted plain LED bulbs (from Halfords of all places as suddenly a selection of sizes appeared on the racks) into the reversing lights and had to add resistors to keep the BECM happy. Seem to recall writing up how to calculate the resistor sizes needed either here or in the other place.

These days CANBUS friendly LED bulbs are easily found.

No issues with the little bulbs for interior lights or the multi-LED panel I found for the cargo bay light. Vastly brighter interior was well worth the modest cost. Reversing lights are better, up to not quite crap from really crap!

Clive

Clive

All sorted now. Fitted and tested this afternoon. Naturally dinkle brain left the steering straight ahead rather than near full lock so visibility and working room was more restricted than it needed to be.

Well done LR Direct who got the sensor to me, along with a new serpentine belt, at around 11 am this morning after I ordered Sunday night.

With the sensor on the bench and the DVM hooked up manipulation of the wire gave a range of incorrect impedance readings from 20 KΩ to 800 MΩ suggesting a wiring or connector issue. Frustratingly cutting the wire a couple of inches from the connector gives a sensible resistance on the sensor side of 1.3 KΩ and proper 0 Ω between the naked wire and the connector sockets.

Maybe I'll splice some wire in to replace what I cut out and keep it as an emergency spare. But best guess as to fault is a slightly iffy crimp between one of the connector sockets and its wire so how much trust can be placed in such a repair is anyones guess. I've had a couple of intermittent ABS faults self correcting mid flight in the past which couls support the crimp issue diagnosis.

Clive

On further investigation there appear to be two types of sensor from Britpart.

Island list a plain Britpart branded sensor without the perforated metal sleeve for about £90. Appears to be the same as the ones I got last time.

Brtitcar and LRDirect show one branded Britpart OEM that appears to be identical to the official Land Rover part as it comes complete with metal sleeve and fitting grease at £150 / £134 respectively. Says 3 year warranty. Britcar will do the official Land Rover one for £198, erm no thanks.

Given these sensors age out rather than wear out I'm distrustful of used parts so I've ordered from LRDirect. Be interesting to see what actually turns up.

(Day 15 of the 'flu is no time to contemplate how some suppliers can do an uber cheap version when the ex factory cost is basically defined by a mechanical production process.)

Clive

ABS and traction control lights are on with the associated messages coming up on the dash.

Nanocom says 0 volts on the right hand front sensor, 5 volts on the other three. As I recall it the Nanocom correctly identifies the right hand front sensor but mixes up some of the others.

Multimeter says 0.640 Meg Ohms impedance for right hand front sensor which is way too high.
Left hand front reads 1.125 K Ohms which is near enough book value so looks like my meter and technique are honest.

Obviously the sensor is toast but does the 0 volt reading from the Nanocom imply other faults?

The Britpart replacement, made by OEM, is around £120 from the usual suppliers. Some offer an Allmakes version for under £30. Given that its pretty easy to change a sensor is the cheapy worth the risk. The dead one was a Britpart installed maybe 5 years ago.

Looking round for prices the Island 4x4 site seems to be down at the moment.

Clive

Dave posted the picture whilst I was typing.

If its simply the tips needing reworking to make proper line contact with the O-rings its almost trivially easy to re-cut them in a lathe to restore the angle and clean the surface. maybe 10 - 15 thou off the length which will make no difference to how it works.

Probably the right way would be by hand in a watchmakers lathe. But that needs serious skills and practice. Hand work can follow the cone so accurate set-up isn't needed. Watchmaking machines are crude!

In a conventional workshop machine you'd need an accurate carrier so its all a bit more tedious. But not intrinsically difficult. Setting up to get the cone dead parallel to the spigot is the hard bit. If its off angle it will jam up just enough to leak due to the O ring below the cone.

Or just reverse engineer the whole thing to a functional equivalent rather than dead copy so it's easier to handle. As ever its more about having a big enough market at a sensible price to be worth doing a batch. Thinking time, drawing time, tooling time and set up time is the killer. Probably take as long to get ready as to make 100 on a manual lathe.

Not volunteering. Re-making the float needle and seat more or less from scratch on an obscure French Zenit carb off a pre-war Delage so the damn thing worked with absolutely no data cured me of that sort of thing for ever.

Clive

I believe it is possible to invisibly repair cracked ABS bumpers using the hot staple technique and a suitable filler. If the repaired bumper is to be painted I see no reason why a proper repair couldn't be made. You may need to talk to the folk who repair motorcycle fairings rather than car people tho'.
Certainly the staple repair a friend did on the cracked rear hugger on my Yamaha GTS1000 is unobtrusive even without final filling and refinishing.

Its impossible to remove the ABS from the metal support frame. If you do resort to another bumper or even if you just pull yours off for repair its advisable to seriously de-rest and proof the metalwork. Mine was OK but not pristine when I pulled it off to fit parking sensors shortly after buying the car. 11 years on when I pulled it off again to replace the parking kit due to a failed sensor I discovered the mounting lugs had disappeared and the rest of the support was in a bad way. It was basically just sitting there. No way could it be refitted as was and, being unwilling to trust pictures to be sure of getting a good one mail order, I resorted to creative welding and re-engineering of brackets to span the missing parts of the metalwork. Had to make a couple of special alignment tools to get the new brackets in the right place. Took 4 days of on and off work due to the essential breaks to bring my temper back into acceptable human range. Welding to (mostly) rust is not my favourite pastime. Considerable verbal encouragement was involved!

Having put it back on it looks pretty decent actually and lines up perfectly.

Seriously annoyed with myself for not taking the time to treat it properly when it first became apparent that my car suffers from rust overt the alst couple of ft of chassis et al. As it was once a seaside care I suspect it may have put boats in the water a few times.

Clive

On further investigation it looks like twin packs of Loctite superglue for plastics with the activator thingy are readily available at £5 or £6 (ish). Something to have in stock before working on the known to be fragile plastics bits methinks.

Pity they don't use the plastic squeeze bottle device that the Pattex ones frequently come in. Just a standard tube inside but much easier to handle, stands up when you put down so glue don't run everywhere and far less prone to bunging up the spout with half the glue left inside. I actually managed to use all the glue the last couple or three times. Having to open up a new pack halfway through the the third or fifth job is, um, unnatural.

Clive

If you are unfortunate enough to break plastic parts I've been impressed with the ability of Pattex superglue to rejoin things when used with the plastic primer pen thingy. Comes up it LiDL occasionally at sensible prices and, like all superglue related stuff, keeps well in the fridge. I'm told Pattex is a Loctite brand so it ought to be the real deal.

Won't do miracles but if you can avoid bending things when putting them back together it will hold the plastic projections on the back of trim panels well enough to get the clips home. Pretty good going in my book as there is next door to nowt to glue. Unfortunately around 50% failure rate on removal so be prepared for re-gluing.

Clive