BrianH wrote:

Can't find the email now but it was asking why one of mine was ok for the Ulez but not Birmingham when the same standard is applied to both places.

Be interested to know which one is OK. The P38 meets Euro 3 so shouldn't be ULEZ compliant but there is obviously an error in the TfL database as it shows a 2000 or later, 4.0 litre P38 as complaint but a 4.6 isn't, even though they both meet the same standard. One other loophole was filled when they changed from the T-Charge to ULEZ. Under T-Charge an import, which doesn't have emissions data on the V5, was considered exempt, whereas under ULEZ, it isn't.

Because pattern mild steel ones are a bit of a lottery, you may get one that lasts or you may get one that rots out in a couple of years. You know a stainless one will last and it's a lot cheaper than a genuine Land Rover one (£1,893.60 inc VAT for the front downpipes alone, a mere £401.57 for the middle box though). My original lasted the best part of 20 years before the middle box rotted out, the Britpart replacement lasted under 2 years.

Just a shame none of them give the same concessions to LPG vehicles as France, Germany, Belgium and Holland though. Classed the same as a hybrid so allowed into all the zones.

Diesels have to be 2016 or later to avoid the charge, whereas petrols have to be post 2000 with no concession for LPG. Bristol are planning on going one better and banning diesels completely from the City Centre. The other exemption is anything with the tax class of Historic, so anything over 40 years old, is also exempt from charge.

You can try it, that will prove if the motor has enough grunt to move the range change spindle.

I drove mine with the motor removed (long story) and as I lifted off the throttle the revs dropped to tickover and I found myself coasting with no drive. It had put itself into transfer neutral......

Maybe that would free it off? Although mine was in high at the time.

Good point. The flock coating on the pillar trims gets dirty, comes off in places and generally looks a bit crap. I cleaned mine off, initially with white spirit then found that warm soapy water and a plastic scraper works just as well. Once off it leaves a clean surface which initially I was going to cover with something as I noticed reflections from other cars lights in the shiny pillar trims. But, after a while I got used to it and have left them as they were.

If the motor is trying to turn (if you unbolt it completely does it turn fully?) but not changing range, it sounds like something is stuck, probably due to lack of use, in the transfer case. With the motor off, you'll see a triangular shaped bit of metal that the motor engages on. See if you can persuade it to turn with a pair of Mole grips. It turns a cylinder with a cam groove cut into it to change the rotation into a forward and back movement which slides a dog to engage high or low ratio..

Getting back to the SUV argument, they are complaining that SUVs are bigger than they need to be so making congestion worse. Have they looked at the size of the Tesla? One of the biggest cars you can buy yet they are OK apparently......

As some may know my partner is from Latvia and Riga has a fleet of electric trolley buses running around the city (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C4%ABgas_Satiksme#Trolleybuses) but that involves miles of power cables above the roads and on the older ones the pickup points regularly come away from the cables so they just stop. Seeing the driver with a long fibreglass pole trying to reconnect the pickup is quite amusing but does nothing for traffic flow. No idea what voltage they run at and never felt the inclination to find out.

For cracked ABS bits, I've got a bottle of this stuff, https://www.amazon.co.uk/Plastic-Cement-Stick-Plastics-Weald/dp/B00QQNNWIW/. Paint it on with a small paintbrush and it dissolves the surface of the plastic and melts it back together. You can get the backing out without bending it but it does involve reclining the front seats, taking the headrests off, folding the rear ones and opening top and bottom of the tailgate so it can come out the hole diagonally.

The latest version of the London double deckers are Hydrogen powered according to the stickers on the side of them.

There's a spec here https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Motor-Man-Bosch-Fuel-Injector-Upgrade-D1830GA-ERR722-Land-Rover-4-0L-4-6L-V8-/301374020357 but not sure how accurate it is.

davew wrote:

Apparently it is nothing to do with raising revenues - it is about Climate Change !

Much like the ULEZ charges then. I paid a one-off €4.20 to France and €6.00 to Germany for a vignette that allows me to drive into their equivalent ULEZ areas. Without them, I simply wouldn't be allowed to drive in or, if I did, first time would be a hefty fine and the second seizure of the car. That is about cleaner air, unlike the TfL scheme where you can drive whatever you like, wherever you like, as long as you are prepared to pay the fee isn't.

Dave, not sure what part of the country you are in but I suspect nowhere near London. Until I retired I used to drive into Central London 2 or 3 times a week and it has its own set of problems. Unless you have at least a million to spend on somewhere to live, you have no offroad parking (20 storey blocks of flats with 5 car parking spaces?) but public transport is so regular that many people don't see the need for a car. Unfortunately that means they never take a driving test but can buy a pushbike and, having no idea of what the Highway Code is let alone having read it, promptly get squashed by a truck because they had no idea what those flashing yellow lights on the back of it meant. The vast majority of traffic in London isn't private cars, it's working vehicles, service engineers and the like. Like me, they have no choice but to drive in because they need the tools and kit that is in their car (or in most cases, van).

Unfortunately a lot of the decision makers live in London and assume the whole country is the same. Give up your cars and use public transport they will tell you. Yeah right. Living in a village with a bus once an hour (and the last one at 7pm) means there isn't one every 3 or 4 minutes to hop on any time you like. But public transport creates its own problems. The best day I ever had driving into London was the day the bus drivers went on strike. No traffic queues, no hold ups, it took me half an hour less to get across London than it would do normally so I would propose scrapping buses and offering people use of a car instead.......

I've got a mate who is an architect and he was once doing a drawing of a theme park. He was laying out where each attraction could go and leave the required amount of space between them for punters to walk round. But that meant that the total space required would encroach onto the area that had been set aside for the car park. They also wanted a minimum of x number of parking spaces which wasn't possible with the space available. So he just reduced the size of each space until he could fit the required number in. As he said, nobody would be able to open the car doors once they were parked but at least he'd achieved the number of spaces the client wanted. When you look at the size of modern cars and compare them with those of 20 years ago, they've all got bigger so they can fit in the airbags, crumple zones, etc that manufacturers are obliged to fit these days.

Stick them on the thread and it will bump it up to the top.

It's here https://rangerovers.pub/topic/1983-the-place-for-sales-swaps-wants-offers-gifts-and-giveaways

Maybe it should be made a sticky or even a separate forum heading?

We had 10 D2s at work and all were ES models with ACE, mainly because 6 of them had an 8m Clark pneumatic mast stuck through the rear sunroof. When they were being disposed off at least 3 of them sat waiting to be collected with their arses on the floor.....

P38 chassis isn't galvanised but the metal is very thick, unlike the chassis on a Classic or D1, and the D2 apparently, which is wafer thin. I always thought the Disco was a luxury Defender, aimed at the farmer who's wife wanted something a bit more presentable, the D1 certainly was.

Simon, if you look at his sig, it's a '99 fitted with a Prins system. Hence my mention of the emulator unit.

We had a 51 plate D2 ES TD5 from new at work and while it was a vast improvement over the 200TDi D1 it replaced, it still drove like a truck. You didn't get the 4.6 V8 but you did get the 4.0 litre Thor, that's what BrianH runs. Unfortunately they are very few and far between as most people that wanted a V8 went for the P38 so most of them were the TD5 version. Much like the later D3, almost all have the oil burner and only a very few were sold with the 4.4 Jaguar/Ford V8.