As some may know, the P38 door latches, you know, the ones with the microswitches that fail and lock you out, are the same as the MG TF. Rimmers have a one day sale on ex-factory stock of MG TF parts which includes brand new door latches at £24 for the RH and £36 for the LH. I've just ordered a RH one as a spare before posting this so none of you lot get in and clear out their stock. See https://rimmerbros.com/ItemList--MGF-Body-Fittings-Sale--m-19112?src=MGF18

Oh come on Simon, that's always fun. I, very occasionally, go into the marble floor and glass cathedral that is our local Merc main dealer to ask about bits for her indoors's 2004 C180K coupe. They greet you enthusiastically then immediately lose interest when you ask for the parts department and send you outside round to the slightly grubby door marked Trade. I've only ever bought anything in there once, a breather hose which is renowned for dropping to bits on the C180 engine. I went in once and asked for a fuel filter for the same car, the man said, I'll go and get you a price. I stood there thinking, I don't want a price i just want to buy one. He came back looking very pleased with himself to tell me that yes they had one in stock (I should bloody hope so for a service item?) at £98 plus VAT. Told him it would remain in stock then and drove to the other side of town to my usual supplier who had a genuine Bosch one in stock, for £13 including VAT.......

davew wrote:

Yet still new diesels/petrol are to be banned from 2032..... any bets that it still won't have happened by 2042 ?

I'd be willing to put £100 on it not happening. A recent article in the Institute of Engineers and Technologists magazine said that the power infrastructure will collapse by 2025 if take up of EVs is even close to the Governments figures. Amuses me that they are plugging smart meters and saving electricity to reduce the CO2 released into the atmosphere but at the same time encouraging people to use a lot more......

I've not heard of anyone manage to get close to 30 mpg from a diesel no matter how carefully they drive it.. The guy I bought my Classic LSE from replaced it with a P38 DSE and never got better than 24 mpg. He'd got so used to the power of a 4.2 litre V8 on LPG doing about 15mpg but with the cost equivalent of twice that, he found he was thrashing the DSE mercilessly to try to achieve the same performance so it was costing him more to run.

Might as well while you've got the hub out. Seems the bottom one wears first which puts more stress on the top one that that follows shortly afterwards.

If you really want to protect it from the elements, one of these https://www.carcoon.com/carcoon-double-skin-outdoor&length=468&make_id=80&model_id=847#listing (if they do one big enough). I went to Somerset last weekend to collect an MGB that had been stored in one for the last year. Not only does it keep the car dry and protected but it even has a built in trickle charger to keep the battery topped up. Not cheap but switched it off, unzipped it, got in the car and it fired up immediately so I could just drive it onto a trailer.

I'd put axle stands under the axles to take the weight off the tyres so they don't get flat spots and then fit calibration blocks into the bumpstops so the weight of the car is taken on them and not on the bumpstops themselves. Drop the suspension so the car then sits on the blocks. Ordinarily I wouldn't bother with oil down the bores but having recently had an engine rust up due to a valve being open, despite the car being in a garage, it's probably not a bad idea. If it needs to be locked, which I assume it will be, you've got two choices. Hang a battery conditioner on it to keep the battery topped up or lock the car with the bonnet open, disconnect the battery and close the bonnet. When the time comes to connect everything up again, open the drivers door with the key, open the bonnet, lock the drivers door and reconnect the battery. That way it is in the same state when you reconnect as it was when you disconnected, even the fobs should still be in sync.

You can replace the entire pipes or cut back and extend the existing ones. If you extend, then you'll need to put joins in. Do not use the ones you can pick up from near enough everywhere with the blue plastic ferrules, they will leak. You either need to get the genuine LR ones but they are around a tenner each. I tried some of these (as my partner works at RS Components and gets 20% discount) https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/pneumatic-straight-tube-to-tube-adaptors/0812106/ on mine where the pipes had been trimmed so many times that they were getting too short. Rated at twice the maximum pressure the EAS works at and not one single leak. A few of those and a couple of metres of 6mm pipe will get you sorted.

Get yourself a valve block rebuild kit (with the black O rings, not the orange ones) and an EAS cable and the free RSW software and you will be sorted as far as EAS is concerned.

Welcome to the forum, it was me that sent you the PM on the other side but I can't use this username over there, it was banned for life! Where in the country are you? There may be someone nearby who can give you a hand.

Scrub that, the one marked as for the Disco 2 and Freelander 2 is actually for the later Freelander with the TD4 engine not the early one with the L series. As that disc only covers 2 cars and not 3 like the others, it also has all the TSBs for all models. The disc that includes the Classic and Disco 1 is for Freelander up to model year 01, the second disc (marked as Freelander 2) is actually for models from 01 to 06.

I've just uploaded an iso image file of it to Google drive so you can download it from https://drive.google.com/open?id=1OuGxcgYOKj3E11ATmMRcAryejHzRZZHI

If the TD4 is what they refer to as the L series engine, I've got 5th edition UK version. On a CD that also contains the 95 Classic and Discovery 1. RAVE originally came on 3 CD's for the UK, one covering late Classic, Freelander 01-06 and Discovery 1, one for L322 up to 2005, P38 and Defender and a third one labelled as Discovery 2 and Freelander 2 but opening up the Freelander 2 it's actually all Land Rover TSBs up to 2005. The usual one that gets shared is a bastardised version of the 3 CD's that were supplied to the NAS market lumped together as one copy.

Would you like me to upload an iso image to Google Drive?

Welcome, although you might notice a few differences here from the other place. There's no admin to argue with (or ban you when you do) and we refer to the parts of the car as they are meant to be so you'll need to learn English. So it isn't a hood, it's a bonnet, it has wings not fenders and tyres are spelt correctly.

It'll be a hell of a trip if you want to join us on a summer camp though. But you'd be more than welcome (as long as you buy everyone a pint).......

Read the ad again, Range Rover from 99 onwards, that means the Thor not the earlier GEMS which isn't fully OBD compliant. It is basically an updated version of your CReader with software to talk to other subsystems and the self locking feature so can only be used on one car without paying extra. It'll probably work no better than your RSW software in all honesty.

My experience with stud extractors is that they are usually too hard so snap off leaving you with the remains of the extractor too. A drill centring device (or even just centre punch the centre and start the drilling carefully), a decent drill bit, a LH tap and a LH threaded bolt should do it.

Have you got the heads back? I'd leave the valves alone if I were you. If the heads have been skimmed there's too much of a risk of scratching them messing around with the valves. Sit the heads on the bench combustion chamber up, put some spark plugs in and fill each combustion chamber with white spirit or diesel. If it pours out of the ports, the valve seats need doing, if it doesn't, leave them alone and bolt it back together.

But doesn't the XK8 engine have 4 small valves per cylinder not two bloody great big ones?

You really do need to get under it and have a good look. I'm still inclined to think it is a seized propshaft UJ (probably on the rear), anything else isn't going to be rotating fast enough to hit resonance at that low a speed, but you aren't going to find that without taking it off to check properly. You could always try driving it with the rear prop removed and see if the vibration goes away. If you do that make sure you put nuts on to hold the parking brake drum on or that will try and make a bid for freedom. Driving it like that permanently will bugger up the viscous coupling in the transfer case but just driving it for a short time to check won't do any harm.

I use one of these https://www.amazon.co.uk/Laser-0287-Valve-Spring-Compressor/dp/B0012M9G6O/ref=sr_1_14?ie=UTF8&qid=1539803138&sr=8-14&keywords=Engine+Valve+Spring+Compressors and that works fine on every engine I've tried it on. That one you've bought does say it is ideal for motorcycle and small bore engines......

RutlandRover wrote:

It quickly settled down and became lighter again though.

Or was that just that you got used to it?

There's only one part number for the bracket for the front harmonic balancer and using that one means the big lump of metal hits the sump on a diesel. I suppose it would be possible to make a bracket that held it in place that didn't foul the sump. I was thinking maybe you had one and it had dropped off which was the cause of the vibration rather than suggesting you fit one.

More than the estimate, it can only keep going up......

Bit like a mate of mine who's a pro musician. He did a backing track for a TV advert and was getting a royalties cheque in the post every month. When he got a cheque for 68p he figured the ad campaign had ended and that would be the end of it. 2 years later he started getting them again and found that the ad had been dubbed into a different language and was being run in some foreign country but using the same music.

At that price for something with the Britpart name on it, I'd be inclined to go for a secondhand one. If you can get one from a lowish mileage car you should be fine. Mines on the original and at 364k miles, it's only needed to be adjusted once in my ownership (and I doubt anyone did any maintenance on it between the police pensioning it off and me getting it from the state of everything else).