It's a bit odd though. H gate, BeCM (which drives the display on the dash) and gearbox ECU are all in parallel so if one is seeing the wrong signal from the XYZ switch, they all will. So the LED on the H gate will show the wrong gear but the dash will too.

Next step up from red, which is easily spotted, is heating oil. Apparently, it's much the same as diesel but without a lubricant so wears out the fuel injection pump. According to a Customs diesel dipper I was talking to one day, the only way they can spot it is with a spectrometer and if mixed 50/50 with pump diesel there's enough lubricant so it doesn't do any damage. As there's no duty on heating oil (and only 5% VAT) at between 30 and 40p a litre it's commonly used in urban areas instead of red diesel.

What does the display actually show when you move the gearlever through the gears? If it jumps around all over the place so showing the correct gear sometimes but not at others, it is one of the 3 internal switches in the XYZ switch. If it is just one gear out, then it could have moved on it's adjuster although I doubt it. There should be a short breather on the top of the switch but it often falls off and as it is directly below the LH condensate drain from the AC, it gets water inside it which rots through the thin connecting strips between the socket and the switches themselves. As long as P or N are showing correctly, you can at least still start the car......

+1, faulty XYZ switch on the side of the gearbox. It sends it's signals to the BeCM, the H gate display, the dash and the gearbox ECU. If the gearbox ECU sees a signal from the switch showing a different gear to what it is actually in, that gives the gearbox fault message. It will also put it into limp mode so will only use 3rd or 4th.

A 98 model would have had two wheel TC whereas a 95 could have had 2 wheel TC or may not have had TC at all, so that may be the problem. Is it the recirculate motors or the actual blowers that have the problem? The blowers get their power from relays 6 and 7 with control signals from the HEVAC. The recirculate flaps, as you rightly say, are powered from the HEVAC but it doesn't use a transistor it uses an L272M dual op amp to drive the motors one way or the other. The same system is used for all the blend motors so if you look inside a HEVAC, you will see the 5 op amps, one for each blend motor. They are blend motors the same as the others but without the feedback pot. So I'm not sure how you can get a loss of permanent power as there isn't any, they are only powered when they are commanded to move which would suggest the fault is the permanent power to the blowers. Do they work?

Those limits are for items sent by post, the same as here if buying something from an EU country. If I am visiting an EU country and bringing stuff back I have personal allowance limits. That is 200 fags, so no more bringing 1000 or so back at €3.70 a pack, 18 litres of wine rather than the boot full I used to bring back (which wouldn't e so bad if I could do my usual trip every few weeks but with the Covid restrictions on travel I'm having to pay twice the price for inferior wine over here) and up to £390 worth of other goods. If going the other way, it is €430 worth, which, oddly enough, is almost exactly £390. But, the point is, these higher limits are if you travel over the invisible line, buy something the other side of the line and bring it back with you, not if you order it and have it sent over, then the lower limits apply.

I suspect the Customs patrolling the border areas are looking for people who cross from North to South or vice versa, and don't stop to declare what they have bought. If you were to travel out of the EU into the North, buy something up to the value of £390/€430 and declare it when you travel back into the EU, then you would be OK. Although as there is no hard border with Customs posts, quite how you are supposed to do that is anyone's guess.

Last year I can confirm that the French, Germans, Polish and Latvians could request keeper details from DVLA and be given it. At least they could with speeding tickets but at only €20 and no points each, who cares? One thing that has been flagged since January is that the UK no longer has access to many of the EU criminal databases as the data protection laws are different, so it is quite possible it is the same the other way round.

It is perfectly OK in the UK to fill an LPG car from a domestic tank although you are supposed to keep a log and notify HMRC and pay the road fuel duty on what you use in the car. Very few people do it though as the cost of bulk gas for heating, without the road fuel duty paid on it, is often more expensive than buying from a filling station at the road fuel duty inclusive price. It's easy to spot though as the tank needs to have a liquid take off on the bottom rather than the vapour take off at the top that would be used for heating and cooking.

If you finish it off flush on the sides you can refit the little springy things or fold it over and don't bother with them. It needs to be folded over at the front or the edge will be visible when it is open.

I wouldn't call 51% to 49% overwhelming personally and I think a lot of people that voted for it didn't think through the consequences. However, it's done now and we have to put up with it (or find ways around it....).

What you didn't mention Pierre is whether Rimmers charged UK VAT on your purchase because they shouldn't have. Previously, VAT was paid on a sale within the EU but not if something was being exported out of the EU. So someone in the US buying parts from a UK supplier wouldn't pay the VAT on the purchase price, that, or their equivalent taxes, would have to be paid when the items arrived in the US. Now, the same should apply to a purchase made by someone outside the UK. No VAT charged on the purchase price by the supplier, but charged, at the rate applicable in the recipient's country. The import duty will vary depending on what the item is but VAT is always charged on the total, the cost, the carriage cost and the import duty. A tax on a tax if you like.

In future, your best bet is to stock up on parts when you are next over here as you are allowed €430 worth of other goods (or £390 if charged in Sterling) as a personal import free of any duty.

Glasgow is the only city in Scotland that has anything operating at the moment but there are others planned, including in Edinburgh, see https://www.carwow.co.uk/blog/uk-low-emissions-zones.

I would suspect the situation with foreign registered cars is the same as it is with speeding and parking tickets. If they can get the registered keepers details from the foreign equivalent to DVLA, then you'll get a bill in the post. ROI may now have stopped talking to any UK authorities since Brexit though.

Or just go to V8Developments and get one of their 5.4 litre motors, straight swap with no messing. Going for a different motor if you live in Oz, as the guy that did that does, and there's very little support for the LRV8 makes sense but not here. You're adding complication for the sake of it.

Makes sense but it doesn't explain why improving the lubriction to the oil control rings so they no longer stick in their grooves, without any other changes, particularly to the cats, prevents the problem. Or at least it does on the Toyota engine that suffered the same problem.

What amuses me is that when I used to drive into London in my 15 plate diesel Renault Kangoo van, I had to pay (or my employers had to pay) the £12.50 for the privilege of polluting the atmosphere. But a number of local authorities then charged me more to park it. So because I was driving a diesel I had to pay more when the engine wasn't running as well.....

I bet it does, open a window part way and see the difference between looking through the glass and not looking through the glass. It'll have a light green tint.

All the windows are lightly tinted as standard (unless it's a base model), I don't think gangsta style tints were ever offered

Have you got the correct ABS ECU? Early cars had the Wabco C system with either no TC or two wheel TC, whereas later ones had the Wabco D with 4 wheel TC. Not sure how interchangeable they are though.

GEMS, https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/range-rover-p38-exhaust-system-p38-V8-exhaust-system-complete-front-rear-94-99/272214722398 or Thor https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/range-rover-p38-exhaust-system-p38-V8-exhaust-system-complete-front-rear-99-02/262391772282 or direct from Maltings website https://www.maltingsoffroad.co.uk/parts/4570888410

Not sure what car it is that Simon is talking about but I suspect Japanese and someone has come up with the same implausible theory that affects early versions of the Toyota 1ZZ-FE engine fitted in the MR2 Roadster. The theory is that the cat innards start to break up and somehow make their way back into the engine so wear the bores. My daughter bought an early MR2 Roadster with a blown engine, owner had driven it about 250 miles across country and it had ran out of oil. He reckoned it had been using a bit of oil and after it had stopped with a bang, he had checked the oil and none was showing on the dipstick. We got a replacement engine, put that in and I pulled the old one apart to see how bad it was. One big end had seized and the conrod on that cylinder had snapped due to it being run with insufficient oil.

The MR2 Roadster has two cats and after a period they will start to burn oil and a number of people have suggested the same happens with them. Now I found it hard to believe bits of the cat could get sucked into the engine against the flow of the exhaust, it didn't seem to make a lot of sense. A lot of websites quote this as the cause of high oil consumption and recommend gutting the front cats to prevent it. However, only pre-2003 cars suffered this problem, later ones didn't and when you looked it seemed pretty obvious that Toyota didn't think this was the problem either. Pre-2003 engines had two tiny holes in the pistons behind the oil control rings and the recommendation was to use semi-synthetic oil. If the oil wasn't changed regularly, the holes got blocked and the oil control rings stick in the grooves so did nothing, hence the thirst for oil. On the engine I pulled apart, the oil control rings on the 3 pistons that remained in one piece were all firmly gummed into their grooves. From 2003, the pistons got 4 larger holes behind the oil control rings and Toyota recommended fully synthetic oil and these don't suffer the problem even though they still have the same cats fitted which would suggest the cats have nothing to do with it, it's the fast and furious generation that don't seem to understand the benefit of oil changes and routine maintenance....

Brian has now identified the car but I would still suspect it's the same problem as affects the Toyota engine.

Lpgc wrote:

Is there no in-between - A mild steel system that lasts nearly as long as OEM but cheaper than stainless? The last exhaust I bought was for a Grand Voyager, cost me £90. Went for that instead of a stainless system that would have cost many times more.

As I said, it's a bit of a lottery. Having had my car for over 11 years and 210,000 miles now, I've been there. On what I assume was the original system, the middle box started blowing after I'd owned it a couple of years. I bought a Britpart middle box which lasted no more than 2 years before it looked like this

Box not leaking but the pipe had come away from the box and was perforated along its length.

Bought a EuroCarParts own brand Klarius middle box which lasted at least 3 years before the (original) tailpipe boxes started to go so I decided to buy a complete system from Maltings Off Road. That was around £300 including downpipes with cats. The parts were a mixture of Bearmach and Allmakes branded items but within a couple more years, one of the tailpipes had gone the same way as the Britpart pipework while the rest of the system still looks good. The replacement section Maltings supplied was Allmakes branded and appeared to be the same as the rest of the system which makes me think the bit that had failed was the Bearmach branded section but I can't be sure.

So, at the moment, if anyone asked, I would say an Allmakes system will last but they don't make them, the same as ECP don't make the Klarius systems. So who is to know if a particular reseller is using the same manufacturer or has gone to someone that can supply something that looks the same but is cheaper?

Maybe they are fitting single points?