Welcome. If the contacts on the switches inside the stalk get dirty, no matter how much you poke the sliding button, nothing happens. You can undo the 3 small Torx screws from the back and get in there with contact cleaner.

If that is all you have to worry about though you're doing well.....

Not sure what you are looking at but a leak from the valve cover would be far worse than that slight staining if that is what you ware referring to. What plugs are they? LR suggest Champions but modern Champions aren't the same quality as 20 years ago Champions were. Most of us run NGK plugs.

You've got that horrible SAI system to fight your way past too....

On a GEMS the fuel pressure regulator is purely mechanical (diaphragm and spring) so not going to be affected by the temperature sensor. What does the fuel pressure read when running and what does it read with the return clamped?

It will with them being that far out. Standard heights must be between 85 and 130 bits and ideally less that 8 bits side to side.

Been busy on the red one getting a working LPG system in it. It's been a bit slow as I've also been playing with my other toy, a 21 foot powerboat with a 200hp inboard engine, but that's a whole different story. It has had an LPG system on it previously but I doubt it ever worked properly. The tank, a piddly little 70 litre toroidal, was fitted the wrong way round so the pickup was at the front meaning that when getting low on gas and going uphill, it would stop if you put your foot down. A bonus was the tank was over half full but that did make it heavy so I had to lift it with my engine crane to rotate it. I've since arranged with Romanrob to take the tank that he is removing from his but the 70 litre one will do for the time being. The gas feed pipe was 6mm copper, marginal on a P38, and run down the RH side of the car. It appeared that the previous install had all been installed on the RH side of the car, wedged in amongst the fusebox, ECU, coolant reservoir and brake modulator. Quite why when there is an open space on the other side?

I'm putting a single point system in it. Even though it isn't the preferred modern multipoint, it's the same as on mine, I understand how to set them up and I've got spares. I'd previously sorted out the worst soldering I have ever seen in my life at the ECU, tidied that up and added the extra wires I needed for the LPG system. The ECU is fitted and wired, the switch installed and everything ready for the rest of the system.

I was at a memorial for a guy I used to work with yesterday (who, worryingly, was 4 years younger than me) but when I got home decided I'd get stuck in. I'd already fitted the vaporiser and filter/shutoff valve I just needed something to get the gas to them. Ran a new gas feed in using 8mm polypipe, far easier to work with than copper, clipped it all in place and got it connected at both ends. While I was under there, dragged out the old copper feed pipe. So today I picked up 10 feet of heater hose and connected up the coolant hoses, plumbing the vaporiser in series with the heater. Tried powering up the system with power to the shutoff valve disconnected so I could check the unions for leaks. No leaks thankfully.

All that left was the mixer and vapour plumbing. Fitted the mixer, connected the hoses and, after checking everything again, fired it up. On petrol it was still running the same as before, so, with the laptop plugged into the LPG ECU, switched over to gas and it promptly stalled. Started again and managed to get the revs up and at 2,000 rpm it was running smoothly but a bit lean. Adjusted the vaporiser until the mixture corrected and called it a result. Just got to tidy up the wiring and put it in corrugated sleeving.

At this point realised that it's almost ready for an MoT so did a few checks. It needs a pair of wipers, the rear washer reconnecting to stop the screenwash dribbling into the boot from the top of the tailgate and a set of tyres. The newest of the ones on it is dated 2003 and all 4 are perished and cracking. The rears are Pirelli Scorpions which go flat after about 3 days yet the Goodyear Wranglers on the front, despite being noticeably cracked, still hold air. I wouldn't fancy driving any distance on any of them though. Then it can go in for MoT and I'll find out what else it needs......

Don't buy the Dunlop branded one. They appear identical to the original Thomas (except the pump housing is plain alloy and not painted black) but don't seem to last more than a couple of years. Not sure who makes them but Dunlop certainly don't make compressors. If I needed one I'd go for a used original and budget for a new seal and sleeve.

The tick actually doesn't sound too bad. I've got 2 P38s (both 4.0) and have just sold a 4.6 and all do it to a certain extent. Mine was doing it when I bought it at 205,000 miles. At 287,000 the engine was completely rebuilt at V8 Developments and when refitted it, it still did it. As it sounded louder from underneath the LH side, I decided it must be from the torque converter or gearbox. At 454,000 miles the gearbox died so that along with the torque converter were replaced. Still does it, no worse, no better than it was when I first got the car.

If it works on newer Range Rovers and other cars as well it is probably something like the Snap On unit that most garages use which doesn't work on a P38 as it is too early. No point in replacing the sensors again unless you confirm you have a faulty one. Have you tried tapping them fully home?

A misfire on one cylinder when initially starting can be caused by a liner to block leak allowing coolant into that one cylinder but that would normally be accompanied by losing coolant and/or pressurising the cooling system. Start by taking the spark plugs out and seeing if number 5 looks any different to the others, if coolant is getting in there it will look steam cleaned or will have an orange tinge to it caused by burning coolant.

I only suggested 2700 as I got some off the shelf at my local factors and it is claimed to be high strength rather than the other stuff they had on the shelf that was medium strength. I've used a couple of bottles of it on various things and nothing has come loose yet although they used to do some that was described as stud and bearing fix, but no idea what number that was. As Clive says, something intended for holding bearings might be better.

Loctite 2700. It even stops the oil filler neck from unscrewing from the rocker cover when you try to take the filler cap off.

If the brakes are working fine, then it isn't the ABS pump or accumulator. If they fail you need both feet on the pedal to stop the car. Highly unlikely to be a dashboard fault.

What diagnostic computer is your garage using? Unless it is a dedicated LR one for the P38, it won't be able to read the ABS system.

34-37 is correct, when revved the intake manifold wouldn't have any vacuum in it so it should stay at that, it will only drop on the overrun when there is vacuum in the intake. It should also stay at the specified pressure at a constant open throttle.

It will raise the fuel pressure although you've already checked it and it was correct? It might be worth seeing what the fuel pressure is with the return clamped.

It should never go as low as 0, that would suggest an air leak on the intake. When up to temperature it should sit at around 20-30 at idle. It opens up when the TPS shows you've opened the throttle a touch so it allows extra air in (rather than just relying on airflow through the throttle butterfly) to raise the revs. Is the anti tamper plug on the idle adjust missing? That would suggest someone has been in there playing with it. To bring the stepper back into play it needs screwing in to reduce the amount of air that is going in. I don't remember the exact size but it is an Imperial hex key.

It shouldn't do that, if anything it might go open loop at idle but stay in closed loop under normal running. It sounds very similar to how the 4.0SE I bought was running, that had lumpy idle and would sometimes die when stopping at lights (I was knocking it into Neutral and left foot braking so I could keep the revs up to stop it dying on me). As well as the lambda sensors, someone had turned the plunger on the idle air valve so broken the clip that stops it from rotating so rather than the stepper motor moving the plunger in and out, it was simply rotating. However as you've already replaced that, it can be discounted.

As it hasn't been run much since they were last reset, it shouldn't matter and once it has been run for a while they will adapt anyway. Is it staying in closed loop or going open? If in open loop (ignoring the output from the lambda sensors) it will default to zero and stay there. Normally the only time they go open loop is on the overrun or if the ECU has detected something it doesn't like and decides to go to a default fuel strategy which is always slightly rich to prevent engine damage. Your best bet is to try and hold it at 2,000-2,500 rpm and watch the lambda sensor outputs and short term trims. Neither should stay steady, as when the lambda sensor shows rich, the short term trim will go negative until it starts to show lean then it will go positive and it should continue to flip flop between the two extremes.

Yes, the fuel pressure is a constant and amount of fuel that goes in is dictated by the length of time the injectors are open for. That is taken from the various sensors but primarily the MAF and throttle position sensor and the ECU uses a look up table to decide how long the injectors need to be open for (anything between 3mS and 15mS) under all different revs and load conditions. The lambda sensors are there as a final check so if the fuel pressure is slightly high or the MAF is reading a bit out for instance, the injector pulse duration is varied slightly to keep the mixture correct. That is the short term trim, so a little bit longer or shorter to keep things correct. If the short term trims are always going one way or another, the long term trims change to get the short term trims back to wandering either side of zero.

I recently bought another '98 (a 4.0SE) and had to drive it about 80 miles home. It didn't idle particularly well but seemed fine when being driven until I got within 15 miles of home when it started to misfire. As I had the Nanocom plugged in, I reset the adaptive values which made it much worse. It ran like a dog unless I was flooring it and the report from my missus who was following in my car, it was belching out black smoke (rich), stank of petrol and while the trip computer had been showing 21 mpg up until then, it had dropped to 16 mpg by the time I got it home. That showed a permanent 5.0V (lean) on both banks yet it was running like it was rich and the black spark plugs confirmed this. I found one lambda sensor was dead and the other one had one of the pins pushed out in the connector so it wasn't giving a reading. That is something else you could check, unplug the sensors and make sure all of the pins are there and none have been pushed out of the housing or are bent.

Short term trim staying it -25% suggests the mixture is rich and it is trying to correct but that would also suggest that the lambda sensors are showing permanent lean. It might be worth putting a multimeter on the output of the sensors to see what they are actually reading rather than what the diagnostics are showing. Easiest place is on the back of the plug into the ECU, LH bank (bank 1) is on an Orange wire on pin 34 of C507 and the RH bank is on a Blue wire next to it on pin 33. C507 is the red (middle) plug on the ECU. A lean mixture will show as near to 5V while rich will show as near to 0V.

After the reset do all the long and short term trims go to zero? Which is it that is staying at -25%, long or short? What should happen is that the long term trims should be at zero, the short term trims will vary either side of zero going on the output from the lambda sensors. If the short term trims always go one way or the other, the long term trims will alter to bring the short term trims back to moving either side of zero. Whether or not your reader can display it, there is also a figure for AMFR which is a correction added or subtracted from the output of the MAF sensor so that will be read correctly. On my two GEMS cars both MAF sensors give slightly incorrect readings so one has an AMFR of around -2.3 while the other is showing +4.0. When the adaptive values are reset, these reset to zero but will be learnt when the engine is running. The Nanocom allows these to be written in to give a baseline starting point rather than starting from zero