Yeah, we become a 4 as of Boxing Day too so that's screwed travelling for me too for a bit. My hose from compressor to condenser has started showing signs of leaking where the alloy pipe joins the hose so I've got one of those on the way and was intending to have a run over to his when it arrives. We could recover the gas, change the hose then vac and refill it but the restrictions mean I shouldn't drive over to him to do it.

There is a cure and Marty supplies what's known as a zebra strip to fix it but unfortunately he's working away in NZ at the moment so can't sell you one. He's supplied them to a number of other specialists who are selling them on (and no doubt adding their mark up on), such as https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/233780270593. Marty's excellent instructions are here http://p38webshop.co.uk/RRdocs/P38%20HEVAC%20Pixel%20Fix%20v2.pdf

I also retired at the end of March (two weeks of working from home followed by just home.....) and my fuel consumption has gone through the roof. I can drive the car during the daytime rather than just in the evenings now. Went to the nearest bank that was still in my tier 2 area yesterday to pay a cheque in and ended up doing a 60 odd mile run because I can.....

The only time you would need to have the system flushed is if you had burnt out the old compressor so you need to get rid of the contaminated oil. A mate, who owns a soft dash Classic LSE and is the other half owner of the Vogue we've been returning to it's former glory, is a mobile AC engineer. You're a bit out of his normal area, but if you fancy a run up to Cambridgeshire (we're a tier 2 area), he'd be able to sort it for you.

Looks like mine will be much the same. Got plenty of booze in and more food than the freezer is capable of holding. Daughter and husband were supposed to be coming here but as they live in a tier 4 area, aren't allowed to travel the 4 miles into my tier 2 area (and as she works for the NHS has to be seen to be complying with the rules). So the plan was to postpone Christmas dinner until the 28th when Dina's daughter and her boyfriend come over from Holland. Although the ferry from the Hook of Holland to Harwich is still running and they would be allowed to enter the UK, all trains and buses have stopped in Holland so they can't get to it (and he doesn't drive). Then there is the further complication that her boyfriend has booked 2 weeks off work to come here but doesn't know yet when he would be allowed to go back home. So step daughter's return home and his visit has been postponed too. So there will be two of us with a Christmas dinner for 4-6 which will be eaten over a period of days at some time before it reaches it's best before date.

Fortunately alcohol doesn't go off so, like Morat, we will be having a very merry Christmas. Hope most of you have a better time and here's to next year.

You need the wheels setting straight and the drag link adjusting so the notches on the steering box are aligned and the steering wheel are straight. With it in the air will make adjusting the drag link easier (more room to swing on it) but there won't be any resistance to stop the wheels from turning rather than the steering box moving in relation to the wheels. It's probably best to free off the drag link with it in the air, then do the adjustments with the wheels on the ground.

Well done but it's a good job your coffee cup has a good lid on it or you'd be wondering where the puddle in the passenger footwell came from.....

I doubt you've lost any balls, most likely the cage broke up and fell out so the balls all ended up on one side. Had that happen to an alternator bearing many years ago (on an old Talbot) and ended up chopping bits of nylon off a tie wrap and jamming them in between the balls to keep them spaced out around the bearing. Lasted about 400 miles which would have been good had I not been 700 miles from home at the time......

You can smell the difference in the exhaust between running petrol and LPG, so if you've just arrived somewhere while running on gas, anyone that is familiar would notice it.

Another one to add to the list along with RPi then, on my one and only visit to them my BS alarm went off within a couple of minutes of being there. I suspect they ride on the fact that they could easily be confused with Turner Engineering. As for smelling gas, you always can. I fired mine up last weekend while doing some work on tking88's car and you can immediately smell gas from the exhaust.

It couldn't get much worse. Christmas has just been cancelled here. I'm in tier 2 but my daughter, who only lives 4 miles away, is in tier 4.

But have the reduced the premium as you are almost certainly in a low risk area now? I've got a trade policy but other half uses Direct Line and her insurance went down by £60 a year when we moved house. We only moved 2 miles too.

That would make it a bit difficult. I've found that if the screw doesn't want to come undone at first, if you try tightening it first that usually cracks it free.

What's causing the problem? With the side panel off the centre console, cut a hole in the plastic, and cut and remove the duct, then go in with a 300mm pozi 2 screwdriver with a blob of grinding paste on the tip to stop it riding out of the screwhead. See http://rrnet.gadsdenrovers.com/repairdetails/heateroring.html.

A number of years ago I drilled my manifold while it was off in anticipation of fitting a multipoint. Never did and decided to stick with the singlepoint but I plugged the holes with M6 pan head screws, Loctited and with a fibre washer under the head.

Shouldn't make any difference. I tend to plumb them so the inlet is at the top so more heat is absorbed as it flows through. My theory being that if the inlet is at the bottom the heat will cause it to rise to the top faster. No idea if it makes any difference, that's just how I do it, same as the radiator has the hot inlet at the top..

Interesting. When I first went to see them before taking my engine in they asked what I'd been running in it and I told them 10W-40 or 15W-40 which they reckoned was too thin. Remembering that conversation I asked what I should use when I picked it up and was told 10W-50 or 10W-60 if I could get it. That was just a short engine mind, I did the heads myself, maybe they were being cautious with an engine they weren't putting together or they've found that the high zinc formulations are better since they did mine. I'll always go towards the heavier oils though. If my car got used for lots of short journeys with lots of cold starts rather than running it for hours on end at a constant 2,500-3,000 rpm, the heavier oil might not be so good for it.

5W?? How cold does it get where you are? 5W is recommended for areas when it gets down to -35C. Lubrication chart recommends 10W-40, 50 and 60 for an ambient range of -20 to +55C. 5W oils are only recommended for modern engines and even then only specified by manufacturers to get the best possible economy figures, sod all to do with engine longevity. I've been running 10W-60 since the rebuilt engine went in 130k ago on the recommendation of V8 Developments and it seems to get better for every 10k I put on it. Remember, it's an engine designed in the 1960s when oil was 20W-50. I once drove a V12 Jag of similar vintage that had been filled with 5W-30. After 100 miles it had zero oil pressure at idle and at best it could hit 10psi when running. Older design engines want thick, gloopy oil, not piss water.

I reckon an exhaust is dead easy with the suspension on high. But I must admit, having spent years working under cars, either a P38 with the suspension on high or anything else on ramps or axle stands, taking off and putting back my transfer case last week with the car up in the air I thought was far more uncomfortable than with it on the ground. Working with my hands above my head is a lot more comfortable when laying down than standing up.....

Dedicated picture hosting was something Gordon has been meaning to look into for a while so you can upload directly to the site. Maybe a lockdown Christmas will give him time to do it (although as he recently became a father, maybe not....).

I recently installed one of Marty's DSP amp replacements and it works superbly however, it got me to thinking. While the door amps are fairly easy to get hold of, the plugs aren't so easy unless you can find a scrap P38 and chop the wiring off. Sooner or later supplies will dry up of both and, while the door amps are still available new, they are ridiculously expensive. So it made me wonder if there is an alternative way of doing it? The amps are just that, amps, but with a built in crossover so have two outputs, one for bass and one for mid/treble. I wasn't able to find a cheap and cheerful amp with crossover but could find amps and crossovers available for not much money at all.

I will stress that I haven't built one of these, and don't have a car with DSP to use for testing, but I can't see any reason why it wouldn't work. If I could lay my hands on a dead DSP amp it would be worth pulling the socket off it to make up a system that could simply be plugged in as a replacement saving an awful lot of time with soldering iron and heat shrink tubing.

I would propose using a couple of TDA7492 based amp units such as https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2-x-50W-TDA7492-D-Class-High-Power-Digital-Amplifier-Board-Module/163019456498 feeding into 4 of these https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/120W-Adjust-Treble-Bass-2-Way-HiFi-Speaker-Frequency-Divider-Crossover-Filter-es/264933727526 or similar. The attenuators may be needed if feeding it with an original head unit but the TDA7492 chip does have variable gain so it might just need the gain turning down. If you are feeding it from an aftermarket head unit with line level outputs, then they won't be needed or if feeding from a speaker output level the amps won't be needed, just the crossovers. If using amps, there is a 12V supply (that originally powered the DSP amp) and a turn on signal from the head unit available at the DSP amp connector so with the addition of a relay the amps would only be powered when the head unit was switched on.

I intended doing a complete write up for someone on RR.net but after the owners removed all the useful information on there I didn't feel inclined to start building it up again. So I've sent the following to the OP by PM and are publishing it here instead. This applies to a situation where the head unit is also being replaced with an aftermarket one so only deals with speakers and crossovers, not the amps, but if it was to be installed as a replacement for the DSP and retaining the OE head unit, then a pair of amps would need to be added before the crossovers.

If you are going to install an aftermarket head unit, you won’t need to replace the DSP amp with separate ones, you just need to link the wiring through at the DSP amp plug. Feeds from the radio all went to the DSP amp and the wiring to the speakers comes from there.

Your aftermarket head unit will have connections for the following:
Permanent power – connect to Purple wire on Pin 4 of C0098 (Grey 8 way connector)
Ignition switched power – connect to White/Pink on Pin 7 of C0098
Illumination – Connect to Red/White on Pin 6 on C0098
Ground – Connect to Black on Pin 8 of C0098
Turn on signal (often marked as for an electric aerial) - Connect to Grey/Black on C0098 (only needed if you intend installing amps)

It will also have the following outputs:
Left Front +ve and –ve – Connect to Yellow and Yellow/Black on pins 5 and 6 on C0092 (Brown 8 way connector)
Right Front +ve and –ve – Connect to Red and Red/Black on pins 3 and 4 on C0092
Left Rear and Right Rear – There will be no wires for the rear feeds at the radio as this was taken care of in the DSP amp. You will need to run two new pairs of wires from here to the DSP amp location.
Subwoofer +ve and –ve – Connect to Orange and Orange/Black on pins 1 and 4 of C0921 (small 6 way connector with only 4 ways used).

Use the diagram above to ensure you get the correct wires on the plug that went onto the DSP amp. With the exception of pin 26 which is the main ground, pins coloured black on the diagram are ones that aren't needed. Although the numbering seems strange, the wires are arranged in pairs just not necessarily on the same row, hence pins 38 and 30 (for example) are next to each other. The back of this plug can be removed so you can cut the wires as close as possible to the plug giving you maximum length to play with and ensure you have the correct wires. I suggest cutting and connecting one pair at a time and not chopping the lot off then getting very confused.

At the DSP amp end you need to connect the wires from the front through to the speakers. Ideally this needs to be done via 2 way crossovers (four, one for each channel) to retain the sound quality.

Left Front – Connect the Yellow and Yellow/Black on pins 38 and 30 to the I/P of the crossover, the low frequency output of the crossover to the Green/Yellow and Yellow/Green wires from pins 4 and 3, connect the mid/high frequency output of the crossover to the White/Yellow and Yellow/White on pins 33 and 34.

Right Front - Connect the Red and Red/Black on pins 9 and 17 to the I/P of the crossover, the low frequency output of the crossover to the Green/Black and Black/Green wires from pins 25 and 24, connect the mid/high frequency output of the crossover to the White/Black and Black/White on pins 11 and 12.

Left Rear – Connect the pair of wires you have run to the back of the car from the Left Rear output of the Head Unit to the I/P of the crossover, the low frequency output of the crossover to the Green/Blue and Blue/Green from pins 2 and 1, connect the mid/high frequency output of the crossover to the Blue/White and White/Blue on pins 31 and 32.

Right Rear – Connect the pair of wires you have run to the back of the car from the Right Rear output of the Head Unit to the I/P of the crossover, the low frequency output of the crossover to the Green/Red and Red/Green from pins 23 and 22, connect the mid/high frequency output of the crossover to the White/Red and Red/White on pins 13 and 21.

If you choose not to use crossovers and are quite happy with a ‘muddy’ sound quality, then simply parallel the Low and mid/high frequency feeds to the speakers.

The sub output from the radio simply loops through the DSP amp so the input and output need connecting together. Connect the Orange and Orange/Black on pins 39 and 40 to a matching pair of Orange and Orange/Black wires on pins 6 and 14 which go to the sub.

You will be left with a few spare wires that aren’t being used. These are for power to the amp (two supplies, one on a Purple wire and the other on a Brown wire), the switch on signal, Navigation mute, Navigation voice input, Road speed signal (for the speed dependant volume adjustment), Ground, DSP data, Phone Mute and Phone audio input (yes, despite numerous people butchering the wiring to add phone kits, there was a simple plug in loom available from LR that integrated a mobile phone with the existing system). All these spare wires should be insulated so they don’t short out against ground or each other.

I’ve gone through this at least 3 times now to make sure I’ve got it correct and haven’t got my +ve and –ve feeds crossed (which, again, will result in poor sound quality), but check through the diagram and legend above just to see if you can see any errors.