Even after editing the post so the picture shows up, I still have one question. Where's the bloody rear wheel??

and what did you do in 1994 that caused you to meet a GMP Traffic officer? Would probably still have been using their Classics then.

Or at least there shouldn't be, even though Bolt admitted that he walked around to the front of the car and looked at the RH side as looking at it......

For the first 8 years of it's life mine spent much of it's time dragging dead 44 tonners off the M6. I had an email conversation not long after I got it with a retired GMP traffic plod that used to drive it, reckoned it, and the other matching ones in the batch that they had, were the best cars they ever had.

Nice one. Yes, there is a connection to the BeCM from the switch/display unit so that is obviously what tells it to put the light up on the dash.

Re the compressor kicking in every so often. Has the valve block been rebuilt as a slight leak through the diaphragm valve could cause the pressure in the reservoir to drop gradually so the compressor will be caused to kick in by the pressure switch. Or it might just be a pressure switch with a particularly narrow hysteresis.

He says he has, but there's two ways to achieve it, either with the harness that plugs into the BeCM or with two wire jumpers on the plug to the EAS ECU. Difference is the harness costs around £50 and two bits of wire cost a lot less than that but they both do the same job. I can't see anyone fitting both but it's always possible I suppose.

Power to the switch and display goes via the RH one, the data signals go via the LH one. I had a dodgy connection in the LH one on the Ascot, every time I went over a bump the height light would go out, then come back with all 4, then go back to just one, all accompanied by three beeps and EAS Fault coming up on the dash.

I think in future we should stick to Port and Starboard, that way there shouldn't be any confusion....

Swapping bits around, particularly trying to mix GEMS and Thor components is only going to make a simple swap very complicated. The 4HP22 is good for 380Nm so should cope with the 4.6 easily unless you flat foot it to the red line all day every day. Swapping a Thor engine for a Thor engine, irrespective of engine size, is simply that, a swap. Everything will mate up and all electrical connections will mate up and be in the right place. Externally the only way of telling a 4.0 litre from a 4.6 is to look at the engine number prefix, the differences are internal (crank, rods and pistons). On a GEMS the obvious way of telling the difference is by the 4.0 or 4.6 cast into the top of the plenum but I know of at least 2 cars where the plenum says it's a 4.0 litre but the engine number says it's a 4.6 (even the throttle bodies are the same), both still running the original 4HP22 gearboxes without problems.

The 4.6 torque converter can't be bigger, the spacer between the crankshaft and flex plate is about 10mm thicker on a 4.6 meaning it must be slimmer.

Power to the inhibit switch comes directly from the fusebox, so doesn't go via the connector on the Port side. It's a dual pole switch, one pole simply brings the light on.

Driver pack isn't involved as all it does is convert low current signals from the ECU into high current ones to operate the solenoids.

Just had a look at the diagram thinking that the feeds for the 4 lights would come on 4 different wires but they don't, there's electronics within the rocker switch/display unit so the fact that someone has been inside it suggests that may be where the fault lies.

A man after my own heart, I don't have a problem with O rings. OK, it's a bit fiddly and kneeling on the ground with your head in the footwell can get a bit uncomfortable after a while, but it isn't difficult. I've done at least 8 sets and only had a problem getting the screw out on two of them, but was able to drill the head off in both cases.

RR.net seems to be getting worse. There's two threads where I started off trying to be helpful but what's the point in giving advice when people seem to completely ignore it?

If it was fuelling and what you've been hearing all this time is pre-ignition, check that the knock sensors are still connected as they should have detected it and retarded the ignition of the appropriate cylinder to stop it. Admittedly GEMS so not quite as intelligent as the Motronic but when doing the core plugs on the Ascot I found that one of the knock sensors wasn't connected and the plug was so mangled that it couldn't be connected anyway. Nothing at all shown from reading fault codes.

All 4 lights and the Extended Height symbol on the dash usually signifies a fault but that would usually be accompanied with EAS FAULT on the dash. There's two fault modes depending on what the ECU thinks it has seen. In one mode it drops to the bumpstops, gives all 4 lights, the warning on the dash and the 35 MPH Max, the other mode puts it into High and gives the same indication with the 35 MPH Max message. In either case it wouldn't be adjusting height with speed though.

It does sound like an ECU problem, or there's still some extra wiring that you haven't found and removed yet. Nano should be able to tell you if the compressor is running or not and this will coincide with the pressure switch OPEN or CLOSED indication. Wiring from the ECU to the switch and display goes via the connector behind the LH kick panel. In your case this would be the one on the drivers side, left as sitting in the car, the side with that big round thing you use to make it go round corners.....

It was no problem on my 98 as the cables were long enough. On the Ascot, same year as yours, I had to alter the run on the positive so it runs over the bundle of cables going into the ECU box (not sure if you even have that bundle on a diesel though) and extend the negative. The negative had been butchered as someone had fitted a battery isolator before I got it so needed replacing anyway, so I just got a pre-made negative cable that was slightly longer.

There's no connections at all between height sensors and ECU. Front right connects directly to pins 21, 23 and 24 (24 is common to all 4 sensors). 21 to 24 is each end of the pot while 23 is the wiper. Colours are pin 21, Orange/Purple, pin 23, Orange/Yellow and pin 24 Black/Pink. The 4 Black/Pink wires join at splice S116 but I've no idea where that lives I'm afraid.

You can do a straight swap and even use the original ECU. The GEMS ECU has to be told whether it is fuelling a 4.0 litre or 4.6 but the Thor uses the same one, it, presumably, just uses the lambda sensors to learn the fuelling.

The bell housings are the same as the blocks are externally identical. Torque converters are different between a GEMS 4.0 litre and a GEMS 4.6 too but not on the Thor so if you decided to use the GEMS box you'd probably need to use the Thor torque converter. I believe the gearboxes are different lengths if it's from an early GEMS, so sticking with the 4.0 litre Thor gearbox would keep it simple.

I did some work on a 4.0 GEMS that wasn't starting. Started to suspect the crank sensor and pulled that out. On a GEMS, due to the different torque converter, the spacer between the flex plate and crank is a different thickness, so the crank sensor has a spacer on the 4.6 and not the 4.0 litre. Found this one had a spacer but with the lower inspection plate off, could see that the CPS was positioned correctly. Turned out, after cleaning paint off the area of the block with the engine number on it that it was actually a 4.6 (with the 4.0 litre GEMS plenum) running through the original 4HP22 gearbox without any problems.

How long it takes is going to depend on the charger, so maybe your charger is dying?

The one I uploaded is the English version.

Just had to do that on the Masser callipers but they'd been rounded off in the past so I soaked them in Plus Gas then put the bleed nipples in a bench vice and unscrewed the calliper from the nipple.

BrianH wrote:

Still not got yours fixed I guess?

He's only a youngster with too much disposable income and likes wasting money......