Every weekend? I'm filling up about 3 times a week, sometimes 3 times a day!! Filled up 5 times in 24 hours a couple of weeks ago......

I'm not so sure about that, or they were using it as an excuse. My local Flogas depot sells at 58p a litre but less than a mile away there's a filling station supplied by Flogas selling at 68.9. Flogas depot is only open 8:00-16:30 Monday to Friday but the filling station is 24 hour so they still do a decent amount of trade. I highly doubt they are paying 58p a litre for it when buying in bulk but even if they were, that's still 11p per litre profit, far more than they make on petrol.

Then again, now Nigel (Nigelbb) has discovered that a P38 runs perfectly well on E85 maybe it's time to start brewing some Ethanol?

Shell removed LPG from 205 stations last year. They were supplied by Autogas Ltd, a collaboration between Shell and Calor but they had a falling out so all Shell stations were told they could no longer supply them with LPG. Some of the Shell branded but privately owned stations started to get their supplies from elsewhere while the Shell owned ones just removed the pumps. As the signage is supplied by Shell, even the privately owned ones rarely have a space for LPG price outside even though they do sell it. The filllpg.co.uk website is particularly slow (if it works at all) but a good alternative is autogas.app which works fine for finding the hidden stations you didn't know about.

They are telling you lies, AC O rings are available https://parts.jaguarlandroverclassic.com/parts/index/part/id/L7.L7F.L7F01.L7F01010/brand/land-rover/ although some of the oil cooler ones are shown as NLA.

It's the motor on the transfer case that changes it from high to low ratio. You can see it bolted to the back, next to the parking brake drum. Looks much like a windscreen wiper motor (and is actually very similar to a windscreen wiper motor. I drove a car with the motor unplugged and that gave a permanent Select Neutral message on the dash and didn't allow the torque converter to lock up so it was revving higher than it should when cruising. So although interconnected with the gearbox, I don't think it is likely to be the problem.

It's like a UK version of Sirius that the Yanks have. Digital Audio Broadcasting, it's a way of getting multiple radio stations into a single 2Mhz wide multiplex, similar to digital TV in a way. That way they can use a bit of unused (and not required by anyone) radio spectrum for something useful. The original idea was that they could then turn off all the FM stations and the Government could sell that spectrum to the mobile phone networks but that hasn't happened as it is no use to them. Originally it was intended to be a pan-European system but other countries haven't adopted it. France has a few stations using it but only in small areas and I think there's a few stations in Germany but that is about it. It's probably one of those things that has been overtaken by other technology now cars tend to come with internet connectivity meaning you can stream audio direct from the internet and don't have to rely on a network of expensive to install and maintain transmitter sites.

In theory, Steel Seal, unlike Radweld, KSeal and the other magic potions, shouldn't clog anything as it should remain liquid unless it encounters lots of heat, the sort of heat it is going to find if combustion gases are escaping somewhere, but someone (Chris I think it was) pulled the top off a radiator and found a sort of slime clogging it. Maybe it starts to gel after time or when it has got hot a few times? Nigel asked if there was anything else worth doing while the dash is out so I figured it will be easier to replace the cruise hose (it was split at the Tee when I first saw the car so trimmed the end but blowing down it showed it was leaking somewhere else, almost certainly where it goes through the bulkhead) and it will probably be easier to refit the broken glovebox strut mount with it out. The mount had previously broken and been glued back on but that had let go and it fell out from behind the dash when I dropped the panel to get to the OBD port. While in there I'll also seal the joints in the ducting so everything from the heater actually gets to the interior of the car.

Glad to hear you made it over OK Nigel. I had a feeling you were being optimistic thinking you wouldn't need the heater, maybe you won't in France but at 7am in the UK you would no matter what time of year.

BeCM will also trip out if too much current is drawn, give a Bulb Blown message on the dash and cut the power to that circuit. I was once towing a very big, heavy, trailer so decided to put a 21W equipped amber rotating beacon on it. Easiest way to connect it was to tap into one of the sidelight feeds at the trailer rear light so tapped into that. All fine but after about 10 minutes of driving the dash beeped and told me my NS sidelight was blown. Looked in the mirror and noticed the beacon and the white marker light on the front of the trailer had gone out. Switched the lights off and back on again and they all came back only to shut off with the same warning about 10 minutes later.....

For FM I used one of the original aerials as the aerial amp will be powered by the head unit through the DIN plug anyway. One of the existing aerials is FM only while the other one is FM and AM so you'd need to try both to see which one works on AM (not that you are ever likely to use it with everything on AM being there on DAB too). For DAB I initially tried a stick on glass aerial on one of the rear side windows as the heater wires in the windscreen were likely to degrade the performance (didn't try it and it might have been fine) and it was OK but did tend to be a bit directional. I've ended up with a little magnetic whip on the back centre of the roof but I had a convenient hole with a grommet that had obviously been put there by plod on the vertical bit of the back of the roof hidden when the tailgate is shut. That allowed me to run the cable above the headlining and down the passenger side A pillar.

Not sure that is going to be much help as it's for the earlier 4HP22/24 as used in the Classic rather than the 4HP22/24EH electronically controlled boxes used in the P38. So if it is a mechanical or hydraulic problem the manual may be of some use but if it is an electrical problem, as we suspect, then it doesn't even exist in that manual.

The box is a ZF 4HP24 (with the almost identical but lower power rated 4HP22 fitted to the diesel and 4.0 litre P38 and Discovery 2) and it's also fitted to quite a few BMWs amongst others as well, so pretty common. So you may have come across it before and not realised it is the same.

Nigelbb is a new member here after being rescued from the other side but has a 2001 4.6 Vogue which he's had for some time. It's been 'maintained' by a local to him LR specialist but he was asking about an engine rebuild as it had been pressurising the cooling system. His specialist had dealt with that by adding 3, yes that's right 3, bottles of Steel Seal. Although the car ran fine (other than a knackered cam follower so it sounds a bit tappety) after driving it for a long distance and then letting it idle for 15 minutes while waiting to get on a ferry, it got a bit hotter than it should. He had taken the header tank cap off and lost quite a bit of coolant as that was forced out due to the pressure but after letting it cool a bit and topping it up, it had been fine for his journey home. I had previously asked him to check if it was combustion gases by running the car until hot, then leaving it to cool down and see the state of the hoses then. If they got hard when running but went soft again when the engine had cooled down, that meant the pressure was down to thermal expansion of the coolant, if the hoses remained hard then extra pressure was getting in there from somewhere else, most likely combustion gases. Once cold there was no pressure any longer so simply thermal expansion.

He also had an intermittent fault with the EAS but EASUnlock simply gave him a page full of errors that wouldn't clear. I went to have a look at it and we found the hoses were getting rock hard when the engine was running but my Nanocom wouldn't connect and his EASUnlock wasn't getting good idle. Thinking the OBD port could be corroded dropped the panel to find it wasn't corrosion but the pins were loose in the socket so were being pushed out as soon as you plugged anything in. Having got diagnostics to connect, found a few things that weren't as they should be. To start with, after idling for 20 minutes, it was running at a steady 107 degrees C. Now with a pressurised system that could be considered OK but there's no headroom left in case it gets too hot and the hoses were rock hard too. While it was sitting there idling, the EAS was randomly rising and falling so had a look at that too. The settings were all over the place. It looked like someone had programmed it with a bunch of random numbers, best of all was that the Motorway heights were actually higher than Standard, so rather than drop at speed it had been raising! Then I looked at the drivers side footwell and the stains from leaking coolant could clearly be seen.

Seems like a set of heater core O rings are required.

Then turned our attention to the high running temperature and with the aid of an infra red thermometer worked out that it looked like the radiator could well be clogged. Which, after 3 bottles of Steel Seal isn't really surprising. So it was arranged that Nigel would get a new radiator and an OBD port and drop the car off with me for a couple of days while he was working not far from my house. I ordered a pair of genuine LR heater core O rings and once it was at my house (and Nigel had driven off in the Ascot so he could still get to work), work commenced.

Figured the first job should be the OBD port so one that had been ordered from eBay was duly fitted. It was actually better quality than the original with plastic shields that pushed in to stop the pins from backing out as had happened on the original one. Then I moved to the other side to start on the heater core O rings. The carpet was absolutely sodden

so I put an old cloth over the carpet to try to soak some of it up (and to stop me getting soaked in OAT when leaning on it) and set about removing the panels. It soon became pretty obvious that somebody had been in there before, the holes in the side panels to give access to the ducting screws and the cut ducting poorly sealed with masking tape were the immediate giveaways. The small stalactites of, what seems to be a mixture of OAT and Steel Seal, were interesting.

The joint between heater matrix and pipes clearly showed where the leak was.....

The screw came out easier than I had anticipated and the O rings were removed. One was split but the interesting thing was that they were obviously not genuine, or not even aftermarket, heater core O rings as they seemed to be being dissolved by the OAT and were also thinner than the new ones I had to put in. The black on my fingers is from the O rings themselves.

So whoever had been in there before had obviously fitted some generic O rings that just weren't fit for the job. Cleaned everything up and fitted the new O rings. Before putting it all back together I started the engine to run it and make sure they no longer leaked. As soon as the engine was started, there was a leak. Not a big one but a steady drip, drip, drip. Slackened the screw off to see if giving the pipes a wiggle would reseat them and stop the leak but as soon as the screw was even slightly slackened, I got a jet of coolant sprayed out showing pressure in the cooling system. As I had topped up the coolant as soon as the new O rings were in I knew there was no pressure in the system and it had been running for less than 30 seconds so not even remotely warm but where was the pressure coming from? Switched it off and checked to find a solid top hose and pressure in the system. Figured that the system was so clogged with something, probably the Steel Seal, that the pressure was coming from the water pump trying to circulate it.

Decided to leave the O rings for the time being and move on to fitting the new radiator. That didn't put up too much of a fight but what was surprising was how heavy it was compared to the next one. It must have weighed at least twice as much and not only did it appear to be clogged internally, not a lot of air would have been flowing through it either......

New radiator was fitted and the system refilled with nice new OAT. Made sure there was no air left in the system and started it up. Still had a drip every couple of seconds from the heater but ignored that for the time being and concentrated on the pressurisation and temperature. After 30 minutes of running at idle the temperature was sitting at a steady 99 degrees, still higher than I would like to see, but as soon as the revs were raised it immediately dropped down to 94 degrees, far more acceptable. What was more pleasing was that although the hoses were hard due to thermal expansion, they were nowhere near as previously and after turning the engine off and slackening the header tank cap, there was only a small amount of pressure in there. So the pressure was almost certainly been the water pump trying to force the coolant through a clogged radiator. Went back to the O rings, tried reseating the pipes but still couldn't stop the drip. Dried everything off so I could see exactly were it was leaking from only to find it was coming from a tiny crack in the matrix body just behind the screw. Whoever had been there before had overtightened the screw and cracked the heater casing. Bugger......

Nigel was due to collect the car the following afternoon so next morning I leapt into mine and drove to Rimmer Bros, a one hour each way journey. Well it would be one hour each way if Lincolnshire County Council hadn't decided to dig up at least 20% of the roads I wanted to drive on. Got there, picked up a new heater matrix and headed home. Attempted to fit it and despite having seen various people say it can be done without taking the dash out, it may be that it can be but you do at least have to remove the steering column and, as Nigel was there by then, we decide to bypass it for the time being and have the dash out at a later date.

We got my blocks out and recalibrated the EAS, the settings were miles out, and it sat nice and level and would at least drop at speed now. Nigel reported that on his drive home it behaved perfectly and no longer does a little dance every so often while standing still so that was a success.

I have a theory on the sequence of events that had led up to the specialist's conclusion that it had a leaking liner. The heater matrix, or O rings or both, were leaking so allowing air into the cooling system. That meant there was an airlock in there which would expand far more than coolant so cause pressure in the system when it got hot. That fact that this pressure dissipated when the engine had cooled down again would seem to confirm that. Quite why they thought they had cured the problem with 3 bottles of Steel Seal when, if anything, it had made it worse, I have no idea. The overheat when he was waiting for the ferry would have been a combination of the high running temperature, the almost fully clogged radiator restricting coolant flow and the crud clogging the outside of the radiator meaning that there wasn't a lot of air managing to get through it either. I suspect that the still higher than I would like to see running temperature may be down to the Steel Seal restricting flow elsewhere, possibly the thermostat, so when it comes back for the new heater matrix to be fitted, I'll drain the cooling system completely and reverse flush it which should get rid of any remaining gloop that could be clogging anything else. Should be a fun way of spending a couple of days.....

My view is that E5, E10, E85 and neat Ethanol is a flammable liquid so could be used in an internal combustion engine. No different to people running a diesel on cooking oil or recycled chip fat or a petrol engine on LPG or CNG, it isn't what the engine was originally designed to run on but it works. Top fuel dragsters and some of the American race car series run on Ethanol so why not? While trying to get an old engine with a carb to run properly on Ethanol would take quite a bit of alteration to fuelling and ignition, the closed loop control on a relatively modern ECU equipped engine should take care of a lot of the required alterations. Our current ECUs only allow for the ignition timing to be retarded if run on low grade petrol, they don't allow it to be advanced if you run on higher octane fuel for instance but the flex fuel vehicles have an ECU with wider adjustments to fuelling and ignition timing to make optimum use of the different properties. As of 2017 the French Government have allowed the fitting of flex fuel ECUs (previously it was an unapproved modification so the car automatically failed the Controle Technique) to cars that originally couldn't use it although many have found their car will run on it quite adequately without any alteration.

Very similar problem but unfortunately no resolution other than he changed the gearbox. That would seem to point to an internal fault within the gearbox but even then it could have been electrical and he disturbed the bad connection when changing the box. From the codes, 1755 and 1777 refer to the interconnection between the engine ECU and gearbox dealing with the ignition timing retard but the others are interesting. P0722 is the output speed sensor, while P0740 is the torque converter clutch so both electrical. However, electrical faults tend to work or not, not appear and gradually get worse. A few posts on the subject (it seems to be common on Discoveries fitted with the 4HP22 gearbox) on other forums have mentioned battery and alternator but I can't see that either, unless the supply getting to the gearbox is low due to a bad connection somewhere.

The XYZ switch drives the LED next to the gear lever and also the gear display in the dash (although this will usually blank anyway if the gearbox is in limp mode), but if the LED next to the gear lever displays correctly, then the XYZ switch is fine.

The only time I have know an auto hesitate before engaging gears, was on an Audi where somebody had filled it with the wrong fluid. It was one built at a changeover point so the fluid was correct for the year of car but not the particular gearbox fitted. I assume you have checked the fluid level as per the book, checked cold with engine running in Neutral after slowly cycling through all the gears. Is it the correct fluid? It should be Dexron 3, not Dexron 4 or 5, later is not always better and isn't an upgrade as many seem to think.

We spoke about this and I considered bunging some E85 in mine last weekend when I was in France. The only thing that stopped me from doing it is that one of my lambda sensors gives an open circuit heater fault (P1187) all the time so one bank runs open loop. It remained after I replaced the lambda sensor so it is obviously a wiring or connector problem but ordinarily that doesn't matter as the petrol in the tank is treated the same as the spare wheel, for use in emergencies only, and I run solely on LPG. But that stopped me from trying it, or at least a sizeable percentage mix of E85 and petrol, as not having a lambda sensor signal to allow it to run in Closed Loop, may not have been such a good idea. However, Land Rover say that all their vehicles built since 1994, so from the beginning of P38 production are E10 compatible so that means that the fuel system is made from materials that aren't going to suffer. As E85 has been around in France for quite some time now, P38 owners over there have tried it and report no problems with performance or driveablity. They started with a 25% mix of E85 and petrol and worked their way up to 100% E85. The only downside is fuel consumption rises by up to 30% but that isn't so much of a problem as it is so much cheaper. In the French Autoroute services (which are a lot more expensive than driving a mile or so off the Autoroute and finding a supermarket filling station), but they are the ones that show their prices petrol is around €1.65, LPG is €0.99 (but only €0.75-0.80 in the supermarkets) while E85 is €0.85. So considerably cheaper than petrol, and only marginally more expensive than running on LPG when you take into account that you will use a bit more of it.

Those two articles you linked to are interesting Dave but the first just confirms what has been found, similar performance but less mpg, while the second one is just a scare story to encourage you to buy the lubricants they sell. Any change seems to upset the classic car community but you haven't been able to buy rubber, I mean real rubber, fuel hose for years now, fuel injectors and their O rings aren't rubber and the P38 fuel system is sealed so although the fuel is Hygroscopic, it needs to be in contact with moist air to absorb the moisture and that shouldn't happen.

I've been meaning to start a thread on Nigel's car after working on it for a couple of days recently. I don't think it ever had combustion gases getting into the cooling system at all, I've got my own theory on the sequence of events but I'll save that, and some rather interesting photographs, when I get time to write it up.....

https://auctions.asm-autos.co.uk/auction/items/details/2001-land-rover-range-rover-bordeaux-3950cc-petrol-automatic-4-speed-5-door-estate/180750 if anyone wants a look. Is it the same one that was on Coparts and eBay a few months ago? If it is, at least it's been washed before the pictures were taken this time.

AFAIK there's no difference with the ECU but the difference with the height sensors is a socket on the sensor itself or on a flying lead. Don't see why they can't be swapped as long as there is enough cable, they are only a potentiometer after all.

My generic code reader will work with just about anything BUT, with GEMS it shows a MAF airflow reading but in the wrong units and with the decimal point in the wrong place. Fine as an indication that the flow is increasing with revs but doesn't give any meaningful figures. My Nanocom has licences for GEMS and Diesel so if connected to a Thor will only connect to the other subsystems not the engine.

Which NGK plugs are you using? GEMS takes BPR6ES and they are gapped as standard at around 30 thou anyway.