Thanks Dave but if I'm going to take it off and pull it to bits, I'd rather rebuild it with new bits rather than secondhand ones no matter how good they look. You'd still need to add a set of seals to it (and preferably bearings) as even if they didn't leak before you can bet anything you like they will after being taken apart and put back together. Having pulled one off before and knowing what a really fun job it is, I'd rather only take it off once.....

BPR6ES plugs after 17k on gas will be well knackered. I change mine every 10k miles whenever I do an oil and filter change. If the leads are more than a couple of years old, change them too.

They always say if you leave something it will bite you in the bum when it can. One of my minor things became major yesterday. Outside temperature 31 degrees and blower decided to stop working completely. HEVAC detected the problem so cut the power to the other one too. Not that much fun in what is effectively a mobile greenhouse in the sun......

Drivers side blower swap now done. Problem with the old one appears to be a dodgy commutator as it didn't move when initially powered up but as soon as it was spun, started to move, albeit slowly and with a lot of vibration.

GEMS should have clips screwed to the rocker covers. One of mine still has them, on the other the HT leads are held away from the metal with tie wraps.

A lot of those are quick and simple, others not so. My list is quite a bit shorter:
Rear washer nozzle clogged
Drivers side blower bearings intermittently noisy
Slight oil leak from somewhere above the oil filter (either pressure switch or pressure relief valve O ring)

but then the big one. If I really boot it, I can get the chain in the transfer case to skip a tooth. Now considering it's the original transfer case so has done 377k miles, it hasn't done bad but needs to be done. Can't decide whether to buy the chain and bearing and seal kit from Ashcrofts, pull it off and do it myself (not a fun job) or simply get a recon (also from Ashcrofts) and get it fitted by someone with a lift and transmission jack.

Recently fitted a reversing camera (a wireless option with my Garmin sat nav) and fitted it in the bottom part of the bumper above the tow hitch. Mainly to make hitching up a trailer on my own a lot simpler but it also gives a good view so I don't put the towball through someone else's number plate when reversing into a parking space.

I have a feeling I had to log in with a Microsoft account but wouldn't swear to it.

Complete engines or short? I had one short engine in the boot of a P38 and it looked lost. With the seats folded 3 should go in no problem, even complete engines. Your biggest challenge is going to be getting them in. I thought it would be easy with my engine crane but the arm isn't long enough once the lower tailgate is down so once in place it had to be manhandled in.

C'mon then, what was the verdict?

Smiler wrote:

I might just have to keepan eye out for that. I have to say, after being a life long fan but never actually an owner of the Range Rover Classic, I now would not swap my P38 for one.

I've owned one and would never go back, except maybe as a keep it in the garage and only bring it out for high days and holidays. The Classic is a lot simpler but in many ways more complex. Mine was a 93 LSE so had the 4.2 V8 and originally the EAS although it had been converted to springs before I got it. The original Classic was pretty basic but as the years went on and more and more electrical toys were added (even things like heated door locks and washer nozzles so they wouldn't freeze up in cold weather), the original fusebox on the dash simply wasn't big enough so they had to tack them on wherever they could. So there are fuseboxes and relays under the seats, more relays behind the kick panels, more under the dash, more tacked onto the side of the steering column, any space big enough to fit a relay has at least one there. Even the air con is a completely separate unit to the heater with it's own fans and ducting. It is the best advert for the BeCM you have ever seen and an absolute nightmare to trace a fault. Then there is the rust, in places where you can see it and everywhere else where you can't and there's some really lovely rust traps too. If you get water in the footwells on a P38, it's because the heater O rings are leaking, the AC drains are blocked or the sunroof drains are blocked. On a Classic when you get water in the footwells it's because the channel shaped top of the bulkhead has rotted through as the drain holes at each end have got blocked with dead leaves and the water has just been sitting there eating away at the bulkhead.

To drive they are far more truck like, if you've ever driven a Disco 1, then they feel much the same. The wood and trim looks good but the plastic is BL engineering at it's best, they rattle and creak and the Austin Maestro switchgear just doesn't have even the remotest hint of quality feel about it. Oddly, they feel livelier but the throttle pedal has only half as much travel, so you're giving it more throttle than you realise. The P38 feels like a car, the Classic feels like a truck.

Clive603 wrote:

In retrospect a pretty good case could be made for the P38 being "peak comfy 4x4" from a users perspective. Far as I can see all the later vehicles in this market segment, whether made by Land Rover or others, seem to have just added scads of expensive, unreliable pseudo refinements which don't make any realistic difference to real world performance or how well the vehicle actually does its job. They are not even seriously less thirsty. About the only place modern does seem to win out is in the communications and entertainment side of things

Couldn't agree more Clive. Rather than surface sensing computerised systems, like hill decent control, it would have been far cheaper for Land Rover to send every buyer on a free day at their off road school, all the later systems do is take the thinking out of it. So rather than the driver actually driving the car, the car makes the decisions and sets things as it sees fit. Then the driver gets into what he thinks is an unstoppable car until the day he tries something really stupid expecting the car to sort things out for him and it doesn't.

As for the communications and infotainment side of things, you've only got to look at a few ads for modern cars. They don't push any important aspects, they push the fact that it will integrate with your iPhone. Fine now, but what happens in 10 years time when people have realised that Apple products are a case of marketing over substance and Android has been overtaken by something else? The infotainment system will be as obsolete as the CD based sat nav, analogue TV tuner and no DAB or satellite radio fitted to the early L322. As it is integrated with the dash, you can't even easily swap it like you could on something earlier with a simple single or double DIN hole where you can update to whatever is current at the time.

You're in the right place to get it sorted though.....

Which DAB aerial are you using? If it's one of the stick on glass ones, you need to tell the Kenwood to supply power to it. I use one of these https://www.halfords.com/technology/car-audio/stereo-fitting-accessories/autoleads-magnetic-dab-antenna on the back of the roof (just in front of the top of the tailgate) but I was fortunate that plod supplied me with a hole with a grommet in it already to feed the cable in above the headlining.

Off on a slight tangent but a mate of mine has spent the last 3 years completely restoring one of the very last Long Wheelbase Classics. Prior to that it had been standing for 12 years but just before being parked up, it was converted to coil springs. He's now got hold of a set of air springs so he's decided to restore it back to original. I suggested he checked to see how much of the bits were still there and order up a rebuild kit for the compressor and valve block. On the Classic the valve block and compressor live in a box bolted to the offside chassis rail so he crawled underneath it today. Everything appears to still be there and it looks like all that has been removed is the air springs and a fuse or relay or both have been pulled to stop it from powering up. After phoning me to ask how to disconnect the pipes he set about getting the valve block out and on the bench. Upon disconnecting the pipe to the reservoir, he was gobsmacked to find it still had pressure in it. After 15 years!!!!

Island do a kit of a complete set of HEVAC bulbs (https://www.island-4x4.co.uk/bulb-heater-control-unit-jfc102550b-p-4953.html) and the one behind the centre of the display is different to the others. I've found that with some of the bulbs, you need to give the contacts a bit of a tweak so they make good contact with the circuit board.

I thought it looked easy enough but then realised that you never get the full impact of slopes on a video. This one, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHRvD7H0AcQ of the track up to my mates place in France looks quite simple, just a bit narrow with a couple of tight turns. But it rises almost 2,000 feet from bottom to top (and I had a 3 tonne cargo trailer on the back when that video was shot) so is far steeper than it looks.

When's the next one David, can we all come along and have a go?

Much like the Suzuki Hayabusa motorcycle. Kawasaki bought out the Ninja ZX-11 which, at the time, was the fastest production motorcycle so Honda produced the CBR1100XX Super Blackbird which was faster still. So along comes Suzuki and produces the GSX1300R which was even quicker still and named it the Hayabusa, Japanese for peregrine falcon, a bird that eats Blackbirds......

Should be OK as long as you take it steady on the loud pedal, it'll be rapid changes in load that will cause it to wear quicker. I once drove my LSE to London and back in that state, got so bad that on the way home I stopped and blasted more grease into the front UJs to stop the noise. What didn't help was I later discovered that it had a broken rear half shaft so the drive to the back wasn't doing anything at all and I had a front wheel drive 2.5 tonne, V8 powered car, all the drive was going through the front prop with a broken UJ. Driving it around like that, and I had no idea how long the rear halfshaft had been broken for (since before I got the car at the very least), it completely buggered the viscous coupling.

I think you've probably found the fault......

Good point, yes they are permanently heated and I wouldn't mind betting they are configured to only power up the heating element once the engine is running. Sounds like a short inside the mirror so it shorts out when either the heating element is powered up or the mirror tries to move.

Propshaft UJ. You won't be able to feel any slop with the propshaft still bolted at each end, you need to disconnect one end to be able to check properly. If you give the grease nipples a squirt from your greasegun (assuming you have a greasegun), you will almost certainly see it ooze out from one of the bearings and the cheep, cheep, cheep noise will either go away briefly or change as the floppy ends will at least be lubed rather than dry.