On the other hand, I've done everything on mine, done it properly and now all I do is use it. Everything works (even the rear washer now). I've fitted a Direnza alloy high capacity radiator and a Hankook battery and everything else is standard. All I do to it these days is service it when it's due and if anything doesn't seem right, I deal with it. There's no need to do everything at once, do it a bit at a time and it doesn't seem such a daunting prospect when you can do one job, use it for a while, then do the next.

Apparently the Vanos unit isn't that reliable either and the breathers behind the engine turn to mush and clog up too. I did think a good mod would be to fit the 295 bhp, 4.4 litre BMW V8 into a later, Thor, P38. My logic was that as both the original and the later engine both use Bosch Motronic engine management, it shouldn't cause any problems with compatibility but I've since been told even they are so different it wouldn't work.

As you say, conclusive but counter intuitive. I can't explain it at all but the test results don't lie, the designer did get it right.

A reed valve stop plate is what the outlet valve has, a thicker solid plate above the reed to stop it going too far, but this isn't the case with the inlet reed. For the valve to close off fully it needs the reed to be flat against the body where the hole is but with the smaller leaf under it, it never can close off fully. If the smaller leaf was on the top it would act as a stop plate although, as you say, it would put all the bending strain at the point where it meets the smaller leaf, just the same as you would expect it to crack around the screw if there was nothing there.

Buggered if I know why it is there and what it is supposed to be doing but at the end of the day, if the reed breaks it's easy enough to make a new one from an old feeler gauge.

Aragorn wrote:

I will admit i saw a cheap 2 grand L322 on ebay recently and thought "hmm!" However i suspect realistically an L322 is liekly to be just as much of a money pit.

Near where I live is a place called Avenger 4x4 who are basically Range Rover breakers. Originally it was Defenders and Series that weren't worth reconditioning, then it was P38s and I called in there a few months ago as I needed something urgently and they'd got a couple of L322s sitting there. I mentioned that it looks like you can get a decent one for 3 grand and he burst out laughing, if you think a P38 is a money pit then you haven't even started. Apparently the L322 has far more 'little' jobs that will need doing and the main difference is the prices of parts are much higher. He was saying that he's bought L322s that look very tidy but when he's come to strip them hardly anything other than bodywork and trim is in such a state that he can't sell them as spares as they are no better than the bits people are looking to replace..

Isn't this the car you inherited so has an attachment beyond just you like it? I was in a similar situation about 5 years ago. My P38 hit 285k miles, although I had done the headgaskets it really needed a bit more. It was slightly pressurising the cooling system, not enough to spit the coolant out but enough to make the hoses hard, it was leaking oil from just about everywhere and the compression was down to no more than 110 psi. I considered selling it and putting some extra money to it and getting another but then thought about it. As police spec with an odd range of options, very high mileage and a very tired engine, it wouldn't fetch a lot. I had gone through it getting the EAS working properly, done the heater O rings, the blend motors, the door latches, etc so I knew what bits were good and what weren't. Rust isn't a worry in most cases (unless they've lived near the sea) as the chassis is damn good and the only parts of the bodywork that rust are the rear arches, bonnet front edge and, if you are really unlucky the base of the rear lower tailgate. I decided that rather than sell it and buy someone else's problems (they are selling a car for a reason after all) and having to start from scratch again, I'd put the money into mine. £2,100 to V8 Developments gave me an oil tight engine complete with top hat liners, big ends, mains, cam and followers, etc. Two years later, on the instruction of her indoors, it got a respray and East Coast Range Rovers supplied me with a complete (identical) interior, with seats and all interior plastics so I did a mix and match using the best bits from the two sets I had.

It's a case of the devil you know. You know what yours needs, but it doesn't need to all be done at once, whereas buying another you are into uncharted territory. Whining diffs are common but cheap enough for a recon unit from Ashcrofts. My rear has been replaced but even at just short of 400k miles, the rest of the transmission is still original and still working fine.

This one, the inlet reed

Where the shorter leaf is under the long one that does the business

The outlet reed has a thicker, angled backstop plate and bears against an O ring but, as Bolt says, why is there a spacer when the reed bears against a simple hole in the body?

Orange colouration on the plugs is usually a sign that you are burning coolant, which the rusty ends to the base of the plugs would seem to confirm. The oily plug from number 8 would suggest oil getting in there so likely to be valve stem seals. Sounds like a top end refresh is on the cards in a while. The plugs look to be the BKR6E with the smaller hex that would normally only be fitted in the later Thor engine, for an early car you want to be running NGK BPR6ES plugs.

Plug choice does make quite a difference. I worked on one a car few months ago that simply wouldn't start. It would fire sometimes but would also backfire down the exhaust suggesting timing. We spent ages checking (and changing) the crank position sensor and making sure the tags on the flywheel were all there and not bent and the output from it was good and that all the HT leads were in the correct place. Even though it had a brand new set of plugs in it I ended up taking one out to find it was a Denso. Owner had been recommended these by an 'expert' on facebook so had fitted a full set. Pulled them out, fitted NKGs and it fired up first turn of the key.

I could be tempted if I had more space although it looks like it hasn't moved in a long time from the rusty bits under the bonnet. For me it's the right colour and it's got the Oxford leather interior too. I can't see myself ever driving anything not on LPG for the foreseeable future. Once you get your head round how it works and what can go wrong, it's pretty straightforward. But there's some pretty crap installations out there that never will work properly due to the way it's been installed or the choice of kit not being up to the job.

Welcome (at last). My stable currently consists of two P38s, a 1996 4.6 HSE Ascot and the everyday car, the ex-GMP Motorway Patrol car, a 4.0 litre auto in a very weird spec (got the useful options, front fogs, headlamp wash/wipe, climate control but the cloth interior from a base spec (which wouldn't have had AC), no cruise control) both on LPG and a 1990 Maserati BiTurbo Spider E.(2.8 litre, twin turbo V6), while the missus runs a Merc SLK280 (3 litre V6). I went to my local factors one day and asked for a set of NGK BPR6ES plugs, was being served by one of the new guys who didn't know me and he came back with 4 so I told him I needed to change both banks, surely anything with less than 6 cylinders is just a starter motor for a real engine?

As for .net, it seems to be getting worse by the week. Full of people that expect to be able to buy a 20+ year old car and be able to take it to a mechanic when it needs fixing. If you can't fix it yourself, you've bought the wrong car.

I may be a mod on both sites but here it's just deleting the odd spammer than manages to get through the security, there I'm dealing with about 5 spammers a day and editing posts and warning at least one poster a day.

As I've got one in bits here at the moment, just had a look. You're absolutely right, why does it have the leaf under the reed?

I always assumed that the short leaf was under the reed to raise it up and keep it parallel with the body as the O ring that it bears on stands slightly proud of the body. Without the leaf under it the reed will be held at an angle by the edge of the O ring closest to it.

Either, but it only sees the doors being unlocked with the key by seeing the signals from the microswitches in the latch. So if either the Key switch or CDL switch is dead the BeCM doesn't see the correct signals so doesn't unlock the rear doors. If unlocked with the fob, the correct signal is seen by the BeCM directly from the central locking receiver.

Did you try grounding the two wires as I mentioned earlier in post #2?

Angle grinder and file. May not be as elegant and the finish may not be as good as machining it, but it works

Grizzly wrote:

Can anyone give me a rough distance from wheel centre to wheel arch just so I can manually drop them.

Around 47cm from centre of wheel to wheelarch for standard height, around 4cm lower for motorway height.

Yup, it unscrews and the new one screws on. There's a hex at the base but it's too thin for most open ended spanners so an oil filter strap wrench around the body is the usual method of getting it off. Just make sure you pump the brake pedal, RAVE says at least 30 times, to get rid of any pressure or you could end up with a DOT 4 shampoo.

I had a National Express coach move into my lane as I was coming up behind at around 70 mph. Stomped on the pedal and locked up all 4 wheels so they must work pretty well.

Mine are totally standard with Delphi pads. Never had any trouble stopping it even with a very heavy, unbraked, trailer on the back. Main thing is to make sure the accumulator is good.

Don't be silly, can't you see he's building it in his kitchen?

In the past I've had exhausts custom made and a pattern made so they can be duplicated. It's not easy and even with computer controlled bending machines there can easily be slight variations. But, why are they all so complex? I mentioned to someone once that I could never understand why there were so many variations in brake pads. I mean, car manufacturers don't make brake callipers, the likes of TRW, Girling, Brembo, etc make them so why are they different on every car? If they made tiny callipers, small callipers, medium callipers and bloody great big callipers, then there would be one to suit every model of car and only 4 different sets of brake pads. He commented that you could say the same for exhausts if they were all made flexible, then only the pipe diameter and length would be relevant.