The newly acquired P38 is fitted with a set of 19" L322 wheels and, from the shuddering at speed when I drove it home, I strongly suspected that no spigot rings had been fitted. These are needed to keep the wheels central on the hub as the wheel nuts are not conical and the hub centre on the P38 is slightly smaller than that on an L322. I've bought the required rings but if anyone else has fitted them, do the rings fit on the hub centre or in the wheels?

Yes, if you look at the input values it will show you the feedback from each blend motor (and the blowers). So you look at the figure it shows and then change the temperature to HI on both sides, the numbers should increase. Then set both sides to LO and they should decrease. You can use the manual blower speed control to change the blower speed and you should also see the feedback from them changing. Distribution motor is the only one that is a bit hit and miss as you can use the Prog button to send air to the screen and use the other air distribution buttons to move it. I say it is a bit hit and miss as it doesn't really follow any set pattern like the others, it just wanders around depending on where you want the air. Really, all you are looking for is changes.

Yes, the 15 seconds will be the self test where it drives all of them from one end of the travel to the other to check for feedback. I've been fooled by weird errors at times so look at the inputs, values and see what the distribution motor feedback is showing, then try poking the Prog button and see if it changes.

That would make sense, we all know that the throttle body heater starts to leak after a while. I also thought maybe airbags as the other half's Merc has had a recall for a replacement driver's airbag but the guy I was speaking to at LR checked with a colleague to be told that serious, safety related recalls never expire whereas others do after a certain period. If it is the cooling system one, which seems most likely, then it has probably expired as they realise we'll all have found it by now.....

I wonder how many of the 17,603 affected cars actually had the work done? The 96 and 97 ones both had a recall for airbags but not the 98, so presumably they changed supplier for 98 model year.

Checking the MoT history on our recently acquired P38, at the bottom of the page I noticed it was shown as having an outstanding safety recall. Thinking I would take it down to the LR main dealer once it was on the road, out of interest I checked mine to find the same thing. Both are '98 4.0 litre cars but when I checked the Ascot (a 96, 4.6HSE), it wasn't shown as having one.

Thinking that if this was something serious enough to warrant a recall, I'd better get it done so went to the LR main dealer yesterday. If nothing else it would be amusing to be booking in a 26 year old car into a main dealer for work to be done. Spoke to the service man who looked it up on his system and it showed my car had safety recall D255 outstanding. However, when he clicked on the link, which should have bought up the document showing what needed doing on the car, it said there was no document attached. Gave him the registration number of the new one and that also has D255 recall outstanding. He was that impressed with the idea of a 26 year old car with over half a million miles on it, he left his marble floored showroom full of brand new cars to come outside and have a look at it. He agrees with me that none of the ones currently in the showroom will last that long and said that they currently have 80 broken down new ones, most of which have been towed in, that are waiting for work to be carried out on them!

Back home I realised that I have the full service history from the LR system for the Ascot so checked that to see if there was any mention of it ever having had recall D255 done to it but there wasn't. So the question is, what is it that should have been done to 2 out of 3 of my cars that hasn't?

Aragorn wrote:

Burning hydrogen is even worse for efficency than using it in a fuel cell. You've wasted all that energy getting the hydrogen in the first place, then throw most of the resulting energy out of the tailpipe. It feels very much like a lot of these big companies doing hydrogen work are just setup to absorb government grants.

It is mainly the HGV industry that are using a number of different fuels. As well as those running conventional diesel engines on biofuel, there's some running on Compressed Natural Gas (CNG), Liquified Natural Gas (LNG), Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG, the same as we use) as well as the experimental H2 powered vehicles. There seems to be far more diversification in the HGV world than in passenger vehicles, but all using an ICE on different fuels.

RFD is going to be the same as any other car, flat rate of £180 i think as of next year. So its sorta neither here nor there. Charging VAT on domestic electricity is fraught with issues, doesnt really seem workable to me. Seperating out the car and household uses is not easy, especially when you can just plug your car into a 13A socket and charge it from that if you want.

By RFD I was referring to Road Fuel Duty, the tax that is applied to fuel used for road purposes and not Vehicle Excise Duty, aka road tax. The RFD is currently 52.95 pence per litre for petrol and diesel and 28.88 pence per kilogram (so roughly 32 p per litre) on LPG. So the fuel cost of petrol, diesel and LPG is the cost price, plus the RFD, plus the retailers profit and 20% VAT added on top. It is this duty that an LPG bulk tank owner has to pay to HMRC for any fuel used for a vehicle and is the tax that I feel an EV owner should really be charged for on any domestic electricity used to charge their car.

I'm not knocking anyone that chooses to buy and use an EV, each to their own and if it suits you then fine, I just feel the playing field needs to be levelled.

Aragorn wrote:

Maybe they will become a reality? But the cost differences will remain huge. After all, taking electricity and putting it into a battery then driving the wheels will always be cheaper than taking that electricity, turning it into hydrogen, pumping it into a tank, running it thru a fuel cell, charging a battery and then driving the wheels. A hydrogen car is an EV with more steps, and those steps will ALWAYS cost more, both in manufacturing the car in the first place, and ongoing costs in fuelling.

Putting it that way, it is ridiculously inefficient, but Hydrogen is a flammable gas so you can skip the middle steps and simply run an ICE on it. My partner works for Cummins, who supply engines to a large number of truck companies, and they have developed an ICE engine for trucks that runs on Hydrogen. Mercedes trucks have done the same so there is an application for Hydrogen but not via the fuel cell route. Incidentally, The Netherlands and Germany both have H2 filling stations and are opening more regularly.

I dont live in a city, and have put around ~50k on my EV over the last 3 years. Significantly above the average UK mileage, and really its not an issue at all. The problems are mostly imaginary, come from inexperience, or blown out of proportion for a juicy media story. Of course, home charging is a must currently, public charging is too expensive.

Until you start being charged the RFD and additional VAT ......

There are a few folks on here who seem to regularly do massive mileages, but seem to also forget how unusual what they are doing is? A typical car does less than 10k a year in the UK. Very few people are regularly driving more than 200miles a day. You cant take that niche and say "EV's dont work". They work fine for the vast majority of drivers. Even on a long trip, my car (it has the smaller of the two battery options) has around 180miles range on the motorway. Thats enough for a good 2-3hours of driving, at which point i want to stop, stretch my legs and take a piss anyway. While i do that, the car fills itself back up and its ready to go again for the next leg. Unsurprisingly enough, even driving an ICE car with 300+ miles of range, i'd still stop at the same locations. If i was driving my P38, i'd be scrabbling around every 200miles looking for an LPG station, which are rapidly vanishing!!

Agreed, and at an average of 30-35,000 miles a year, that is me. But when you have to stop to fill up, you aren't getting the benefit of the cheaper costs. I've seen a couple of places now that are advertising the price and it seems to be around the 65p a kWh. I know in France they all seem to be 0.79 Euro per Kwh (or were a few weeks ago) so roughly the same.

I get sent a regular email from Parkers and usually ignore the £xx per month costs on cars (I've just bought another P38 for the same price as two or three months payments on something new) but one thing I've noticed is these deals all come with an annual mileage limit. It used to be 8,000 per annum but it seems that now it is down to 5,000 per year. For anyone doing that sort of mileage, an EV would probably suffice.

the fuel savings very quickly dwarf the initial purchase cost.

For some figures, 1000miles driven in an EV, charged at home at 7.5p, at 3mi/kwh (fairly inefficent) that costs £25.
1000miles driven in a petrol car at 40mpg (i've never achieved this, but lets make it look better for the ICE) costs £170

But that same EV being charged at a public charge point will cost almost 10x that making the EV cost per 1,000 miles the same, if not more expensive, than the ICE car

The main problems currently are folks that cannot charge at home due to a lack of driveway etc, and folks regularly doing longer journeys, there are still some areas with patchy coverage of charging, though its expanded massively over the last couple years and will continue to do so. unfortunately for now, that rapid expansion and little competition means high costs.

One of the last projects I was involved in before retirement was a vehicle replacement project. The lack of home charging option for a number of staff that would be using these vehicles meant that an EV was a non-starter. Even those with a driveway used that for their own car, the company vehicle would sit outside on the road. The requirement was for a small van (to replace a fleet of Renault Kangoos) and the EV version of the Kangoo was only good for around 200 miles on a full charge but that was only when empty. As these would have storage and additional electrical items installed and would permanently be loaded with equipment, even the Renault rep said that we would be lucky to get 130 miles range from them. Considering I used to do 150-200 miles a day and that was common for most staff, it just wouldn't work.

A test I read recently was on the EV version of the BMW X5 on a European trip and one thing that stood out for me was that it only returned the stated mileage when cruised at 65mph, when cruised at 80mph, it was down to less than 2/3rds the range. Is this representative? For me, life is too short to drive along the French Autoroutes and German Autobahns at 65 mph, so I will sit at a steady 80mph. Cruising at that speed I get around 210 miles to a full tank of LPG but it only rises to 230 at a lower speed (or when in the UK...). I agree LPG is getting harder to find in the UK but at least I've got petrol to fall back on if I need to so I don't suffer the range anxiety, real or imaginary, that puts a lot of people off an EV.

My sister bought a first generation Nissan Leaf as she was only driving 20-30 miles at a time so it was adequate. When she changed job involving a longer commute, but not by much, she had to change car as the Leaf wasn't capable of getting her to work and back on a single charge. Now she's moving to a more rural area and is talking about getting a hybrid instead of an EV.

It's the TC light that shows low pressure, the red brake light shows that the handbrake is on (conventional switch under the lever) or low brake fluid level (from the sensor on the reservoir).

ABS Fault will normally be followed by Traction Failure as if the ABS isn't working the traction control won't be either. If ABS Fault comes up as soon as the ignition is turned on and before the engine is started, it is failing the initial self test so it might be nothing more serious than an open circuit wheel sensor. If it comes up only once you start moving then it is detecting one sensor giving a reading different to the other three.

The pressure cap opens at 1.4 bar so I wouldn't expect to see higher than that for any length of time but they do pressurise normally anyway. There's a lot of coolant in there, about 11 litres, so thermal expansion is going to cause it to pressurise anyway. The thermal expansion of water is 1.00021 times per degree C (presumably the coefficient of expansion of a water/antifreeze mix is going to be roughly the same), so an 80 degree increase in temperature means that you've got 11.185 litres filling an 11 litre space. How that relates to the pressure I'll let someone else calculate.....

What I can tell you is that the top hose gets pretty hard when up to temperature. The important thing is that the pressure goes away once the engine has cooled down. If it does, the pressure is down to thermal expansion, if it doesn't, the pressure is coming from somewhere else like combustion gases finding their way into the cooling system or, if running on LPG, an internal leak on the vaporiser allowing Propane at high pressure into the cooling system.

Smoke in cold weather is often water vapour from the combustion process, far more noticeable if on LPG too.

Use the Nanocom to check the O2 sensor outputs. Prins is a slave system so follows the fuelling for the petrol system. Any fault on the petrol system will also show on LPG.

Get a roll of the blue masking tape and run that along the bottom of the existing letters. Warm the existing ones with a hair dryer so they peel off, clean the remaining glue off then you can use the masking tape as a guide for fitting the new ones.

JimAHH wrote:

Just been looking at the decals on the boot as they are starting to peel off.
Anyone got any suggestions on what to use to try and restick?

Ordinary clear Bostick seems to work reasonably well.

Back to what I've been up to on the red one.
Bled the brakes, unsuccessfully. As the modulator was completely empty I think there is still air inside it. Pedal feels really hard, then with more pressure slowly goes to the floor. So that needs another attempt.....

Turned my attention to the LPG system, what a bloody mess! To start with, the toroidal tank has been put in back to front with the multivalve at the front, so under acceleration with less than half a tank of gas, the pickup will be uncovered and drawing vapour. The wiring under the bonnet has now been all ripped out and the mess made of the wiring at the engine ECU is disgusting. Wires cut, soldered using what appears to have been plumbers solder with no flux and 'insulated' with random bits of tape so before going any further I'm going to have to sort that lot out. So the "LPG converted" car has a tank and not a lot else, so effectively I'm going to be fitting a system from scratch.

There were no pollen filters in it and the passenger side pollen filter cover was in the glovebox. As the car has been standing for 3 years, both blowers were full of dead leaves so pulled them both out and emptied the blowers and ducting of leaves. Fitted a pair of pollen filters and put the covers back. Both footwells now need attacking with the vacuum cleaner again though.

Still waiting for the new brake vent switch for the cruise control so haven't put the driver's side heater duct back in yet which was what prompted me to clear the dead leaves out, but did a repair on the cruise vacuum pipe. There was a length of it from vent switch to the bulkhead at which point it stopped were it had perished. Local motor factors and a hydraulic/pneumatic specialist company didn't have anything suitable, so went for the alternative route. I've got 6mm copper tube that I use on air conditioning systems so ran a length of that from the footwell to the cruise system then used short lengths of the remaining rubber pipe at each end.

Unfortunately, rain has stopped play today so not inclined to get out there and carry on but there's still loads to do. Also need to get at mine too as the wiper linkage has started to squeak so needs a bit of lube on it before a trip to France on Wednesday.

As there is no feedback on the recirculate pots, the HEVAC has no idea if they move or not. Hence if they don't work you get no book symbol and don't really have any idea they have failed.

2 wire one is a recirculate blend motor. Swapping the motor should get it working. When you put it back together, make sure you align the arrows on the cog on the pot and the main output cog. That will set it at mid point on the travel so you just slot it on and rotate the whole thing until the screw holes line up.

As I have now discovered. Unplugged the front left sensor and still only get the one fault on the front left. So it does display correctly on the Wabco C system.

Brute force and ignorance and you should be able to pull the duct out in one piece.

You might need more than a ring spanner, the centre nut is done up to 109 lb/ft, so socket and big breaker bar is the way to do it.. Changing that rear seal isn't actually that difficult. With the drum in place put the handbrake on so it doesn't turn when you undo the nut. Let the handbrake off, remove the drum and the rear flange should just pull out. RAVE shows a gear puller being used but I've never known one need it, they usually just pull out. Lever the old seal out, push the new one in, coat it with ATF then put the flange back.

That isn't part of the gearbox, it's the transfer case output. To get to the gearbox you have to remove the transfer case, a whole new can of worms, especially as it weighs the best part of 70kg.

and when she isn't working , she's taking dogs for a walk or going to the gym......

Taking the actual glovebox lid off is interesting as there's a couple of non-captive square nuts on the hinges at the bottom which fall out and are a real pain to get back in. However, if you undo the 3 screws along the top and one each side that are visible with the glovebox open, the whole lot drops down and just hangs on the release cable. Disconnect that and it drops to the floor but when you put it back there's no need to adjust it, it stays adjusted.

More playing, this time on the newly acquired red one. I'd already mentioned the bodgery I'd found on it with the steering column being welded so it wouldn't move up and down and the fact that the ABS was giving multiple errors relating to the traction control as someone had replaced the Modulator with one from a base model with no traction control, well not any more.

Spent Tuesday giving Marty a hand to clear his workshop and rescuing any parts that might be useful before everything went in a scrap metal skip. Those parts included a steering column and the correct brake modulator so started swapping them yesterday. Figured that if I got everything free and dismantled on the steering column and then removed the brake modulator, that would let me get at the top joint on the intermediate steering shaft a lot easier, so did that. Getting at the bolts that hold the modulator in place isn't easy but they came out, released it from the brake pedal and it started to move. RAVE says to unclip the brake light switch, which I did, but it unfortunately doesn't mention the second one for the cruise control vent valve and the brake pedal came back on a spring and smashed it......

Although the brake modulator was free, getting it out is an interesting exercise as the brake pipes run in front of it, so they had to be bent to one side, the throttle cable runs in front of it so that has to be released and moved away and then it only comes out until it hits the top shock mount. After much swearing at it and wiggling it about, it came out. Left that for a while and swapped over the steering column. As well as two bolts to the bulkhead and a couple more to the pedal box, the column is held in on two long studs and it looked like it would sit on those and allow the intermediate shaft to be slid onto the splines. It isn't. As soon as I tried to align the splines it dropped off the studs so I had to wait until my assistant came back from taking the dogs for a walk, so she could sit in the car and guide it in. While waiting I lifted off the ignition coils as the monkey that had been in there before had managed to run the throttle cable under them and not over the top like it should be. Steering splines slotted in, steering column in place, so bolted it all up. Reassembled the switches and wiring on the column before calling it a day.

So today it was back out there at it. The correct brake modulator actually slotted straight in and I'm still not sure why considering the grief getting the old one out had caused me. Bolted it in place, and started connection the pipes again. As they were the original steel pipes and had been bent I had to try to bend them back to the original shape so they would line up with the holes, not an easy task and one union started going in cross threaded so I had to clean the threads up before it went in as it should. Filled it with brake fluid and now for the moment of truth. Ignition on, Nanocom booted up and read the ABS fault codes. It still had all the previous Traction Control faults showing so cleared those, cycled the ignition off and back on again and the dash beeped and said ABS Fault..... However, read the codes again the only one there now was Left Front sensor open circuit. No big deal on that then once I work out which one is actually faulty knowing that the Nanocom gets them muddled up (or does it? It does on the Wabco D system on a Thor but this is the Wabco C on a GEMS so it might get them right). I'll just unplug the front left sensor and see if it gives the same fault or if it tells me there's now two open circuit sensors.

All that is left now is to wait for the assistant to finish work and go through the brake bleeding process.