Bloody trucks in convoy at 40mph on the A16.......

No there isn't, not on the petrol anyway (just got home.....).

Just sent you a PM

Normal recommendation is to put the stands under the axles to take the weight off the tyres and prevent them developing flat spots but if you are only leaving it for a week or so, it probably doesn't matter.

If you run the wires to the left side of the car, there is an unused hole with a plain grommet in it that comes out below the rear lights. It's there in case you fit a twin towing socket arrangement and also behind the LH rear light there's a 4 way connector doing nothing that has ground, ignition switched power, permanent power and reversing light feed in it. Ideal place to run the cables to and connect it up. I fitted a reversing camera to mine just above the towbar (so I can hitch a trailer up on my own), cut a slit in the blanking grommet to run the wire through and connected using that connector.

If a diode has gone open circuit it should be dead easy. In fact, you can normally see the interior lights pulsing when the engine is idling, because you've only got 2 of the 3 phases doing anything so rather than seeing a smooth DC voltage you'll see a lumpy one. If it has gone short circuit it won't be as obvious because it will still be outputting all 3 phases but a clamp on ammeter will show current being drawn when the engine is off. A check on the main battery feed will show lots of Amps flowing and if you then check on the cable from the alternator and see the same amount of current being drawn that's where it's going.

On a P38 it's fairly easy as each circuit goes via a maxi fuse except for the feed to the alternator and starter. So if you've got a lot of current draw and it isn't going to the starter or alternator, then you just pull a maxi fuse one at a time to isolate where it is going.

Yes, Stilton (where the cheese originated from), just off the A1(M). That would be great if I can borrow it, I could come and pick it up if you aren't going to be heading in this direction.

Going over to France next weekend to investigate a couple of problems with a 99 DSE. Main one is horrendous battery drain, like it can take a fully charged Hankook MF31-1000 down to completely flat overnight. Once the battery is charged it works fine. The only thing I can think that would cause battery drain that serious (without the car bursting into flames) is a short circuit diode in the alternator. As they are 3 phase it will still charge but will drain very rapidly when not charging. Now getting hold of a replacement alternator in France isn't going to be that easy and will probably cost twice what one will cost over here. Buying one here to take over and then finding it isn't the alternator, seems a waste of money too. If anyone has a spare I can borrow for the weekend if it proves that the one on the car is faulty I'll swap them over, bring the old one back and get it reconditioned to return to whoever can lend me one.

More than a contributing factor, more likely the cause. Loss of lights and no gear indicator on the dash, along with Gearbox Fault means it is in limp mode so will only use one gear anyway.

Depends where you want to fit them. If I was going to fit some, I'd put them in the lower section, below the actual bumper part. They fit into a 21mm hole but the same company does some smaller (18mm I think) ones too.

That's the old one, you need to use http://new.lrcat.com/

Agree with Brian, Microcat won't run on anything later than XP, 32 bit, won't run on Win 7 or any 64 bit version. I just run it on an old laptop running XP.

Main thing with a P38 is that you can wash it, polish it and use it to go anywhere and it doesn't look out of place, even our Queen uses one! But you can still take it out and get it muddy, drag big trailers around the place, use it to uproot trees, climb mountains and, unless you damage the bodywork, all you need to do is give it another wash. Contrary to what many American owners seem to think, you don't need to fit it with big wheels and tyres, winches and lift the suspension, it's perfectly capable of going places where the driver chickens out long before the car has reached the limit.

Why you've chosen a P38 is pretty obvious to me if not to others. I needed something I could use as an everyday car that was also capable of towing a 3.5 tonne trailer long distances. Having had a Classic and watched it rust away around me every time it rained, that was out. I'd driven a Defender and wouldn't fancy driving one of them 100 miles let alone, 1500. I'd used a works Disco 1 (200TDi) and considered it almost as agricultural as the Defender and a works Disco 2 (TD5) and while it wasn't bad, I just don't like diesels. An L322 was, at the time, too expensive and I've since learned that they have so many interconnected parts that a failure of something that you can do without will stop the engine because it can. So a P38 on LPG was the only thing left and that was 10 years and almost 200,000 miles ago. Still use it every day, still tows big trailers around Europe and I honestly can't see myself replacing it. Well, not entirely, just odd bits at a time as they need it.

Agree totally on the benefits of a forum over the likes of Faceache. With a forum you can search and find threads from long ago that deal with a particular problem (well, you can on this one anyway) but with fb, once it's fallen off the bottom of the page it's gone. I know two owners that swear by the wisdom of 'experts' on fb, one overfilled his engine with oil by 2 litres because the expert told him it needed 7 litres while I'm finishing off one tomorrow where the owner has spent a fortune replacing parts that didn't need replacing (ignition coils, engine ECU, crank position sensor, MAF sensor, spark plugs, leads and probably a few more bits that I've forgotten) when the problem was down to a broken wire that meant the main ignition relay wasn't operating so none of the ECUs, except for the BeCM, were receiving any power. Power up the BeCM and nothing else and all the dash lights come on except for the Check Engine light. No Check Engine light so, on the advice of the expert, he bought a Sync Mate only to find that wouldn't work but it wouldn't because the engine ECU wasn't powered up. He's owned the car for 6 months and driven it 18 miles in that time. Once I'd worked out the problem (big clue was turning on the ignition and the ABS pump didn't start up) and ran a temporary feed from BeCM to fusebox and it fired up immediately.

I've bought a couple of these for different cars https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/-/142316341015? they are dead easy to fit and work perfectly. Although there doesn't appear to be a decent match for Epson Green.

Finally had an email from ECP. They are blaming Crosland for sending out the wrong ones and have offered to swap the ones I have for 4 x 507670037 which is a Bosch pollen filter for the P38, at £22.99 each normally, so 4 of them for £8.55 seems like a pretty good deal to me.......

Sounds like you need to fix your water leak. Admittedly I know it's been pretty wet, to the point where I had an inch of water in the passenger footwell of my works 15 plate Renault Kangoo van, but cars shouldn't leak. Then either get a new cable or one of these https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/New-OBD2-16-Pin-Male-Wire-Sockets-Connector-Plug-OBDII-Car-Adapter-J1962-OEM/311895498803. Might be worth replacing the socket too as that will be pretty well corroded.

No, separate radiator, engine oil cooler and gearbox cooler on a P38, although I believe the diesel may have a combined radiator/cooler for the engine oil, I know the Classic did.

Although checking it with the engine running as you're supposed to could get rather messy if it's blowing fluid out the dipstick tube......

Blocked breather? The gearbox breather comes out against the bulkhead behind the cruise control thingy, next the the EVAPS canister. I overfilled my gearbox once (stupidly assuming the difference between min and max on the dipstick was a litre) and it started blowing the excess out the breather.

Gearbox ECU uses the TPS signal to decided when to change gear so an iffy TPS signal will affect gear changes.