The other thing you can try if you don't mind taking the cluster out again, is to turn the bulbs slightly. They twist in (as you must know having changed the bulbs) but the ends of the tracks can get tarnished. So if you twist them in then back them off a touch so the contacts are bearing on a clean area of the track, that might do the trick. Otherwise you could be looking at a break in the track feeding them. I've got a spare scrap cluster, I'll have a look at it and see if I can see where the track could have broken.

They are on LRCat, Allbrit.de and microcat on page G02035, item 2, although all of them say for GEMS but the blocks are the same. You can get a set from various manufacturers from LRDirect (https://www.lrdirect.com/602152-Core-Plug-V8-Block/?keep_https=yes). There's 4 on each side of the block about half way up and you should be able to see them from underneath without taking anything off.

Also, if you look in RAVE at Overhaul Manuals (rather than workshop manuals), Engines, V8, Description and Operation, page 2, it shows a pretty grotty picture of the engine components. Core plugs are numbered 4.

Edit to say that you found it while I was looking it up....... Although that picture only shows 3 there's actually 4 on each side, one adjacent to each cylinder.

Are the rest of the panel lights coming on? You haven't turned the brightness down to nothing have you?

Yes, the shorter one attached to hose 14. but equally it could be the return as that is steel too. They are here, under Water Rail in the engine section rather than the cooling system for some unknown reason. There's also an O ring that would be where I would start.

Unless it's a core plug on that side of the block, I'd be looking at the heater inlet pipe. That's about all there is on that side that can leak. The pipe/hose layout on a GEMS is a bit different but I had to replace the steel section on mine as it was leaking.

Some of you will have met him at the summer camp, others will know him from his knowledgable posts on here and on the dark side. I PM'd those that knew him a few weeks ago as he had emailed me to say that he had been diagnosed with Leukaemia, was in hospital on chemotherapy but expected to be up and about in around 10 weeks. I emailed him a few days ago asking how things were going and received the following email a few minutes ago:

Hello Richard

I'm sorry but Mark died today - he contracted a horrid fungal chest infection and spent 12 days sedated in intensive care but his lungs deteriorated over night and they had to take him off the ventilator today. PLease can you let all his landrover friend and P38ers know

He was a huge charcter and will be very much missed.

Vici

RIP mate, you'll be missed.

Mine gives a bit of a hard change going down when the idle is above normal (like when cold or when I had a sticky throttle butterfly) but so smooth if the revs are at idle that you have to look at the rev counter to see if it has actually changed down. If it was on something older with a kickdown cable I'd say it was that being out of adjustment but as it's electronic it may need driving to learn the shift points again.

Does seem a bit steep. I meant to ask my daughter's boyfriend as he's in insurance but it all went quiet. With club entry we would have got our own parking area and as we don't have a club as such, then it would have been a bit odd.

Looking at this https://www.thebillingoffroadexperience.co.uk/world-record-attempt/ it appears it's £8 for a day and another fiver to enter the world record attempt. So who's going?

At least it's an easy job to do. Not quite the easiest though. Received an email from my mate in France who had discovered that the passenger side carpet was soaking wet (UK car), thought it might be an AC drain so thought he would ask me before tearing the dash apart. My reply was:
Put suspension on high and leave a door open (engine off). Crawl underneath and if you look up the side of the gearbox about where the cable connects, you'll see a conical rubber thing hanging out of the underside of the car. Squeeze that and you'll get water, mud and dead leaves all down your arm. You are spot on, it is the AC drain and they clog up.
Half an hour later I received this:
Yep, a thing a bit like a black rubber sea anemone.
Squeezed it and was rewarded with a T-shirt sleeve full of water with black scummy bits in.
I wish all P38 problems were as easy to fix!!

He can't say I didn't warn him, he just didn't expect there to be quite that much water in the drain tubes......

A hose is a hose so you would think they should be OK. I got one Britpart one that was too small and no amount of persuasion or lube would make it fit and I've heard that sometimes the ones with Tee's in them leak at the joins (or the plastic Tee's crack). Otherwise I can't see them being a problem.

So did we get club entry or have we got to book in ourselves?

Who is still up for it anyway as it might be worth meeting up somewhere outside and arriving in style.....

Blend motors, yup
Headlining, yup,
Suspension, yup
Heated seats, hmm, maybe we leave that one to Marty. I did mine but I'd need more than a weekend......

The later the better for me. I don't have anything needed on mine but I'll give others a hand with whatever.

But if you do choose to use nuts and bolts, make sure you use washers and nyloc nuts or you'll be pulling the door panel off again in a few days to stop it from rattling.

Simple test to see if you've got all the air out is to take the header tank cap off and squeeze the top hose. If you get a constant squirt into the tank from the hose from the bleed nipple on top of the radiator, then you should be OK. I always use that as a final 'get the air out' move. Squeeze the top hose, put finger over the hole where the water would squirt out and release the top hose. Do that a few times and if you get a constant stream each squeeze and can't hear any gurgling noises, then you have got rid of all the air. It doesn't matter if the heater is on hot or not. It's a full flow system where the temperature is adjusted by flap valves in the airflow rather than a tap in the heater feed like lesser vehicles. With the thermostat closed the coolant can't go anywhere other than through the heater so that will flush any air in that straight out and back to the header tank.

Leaves in the fans usually get in through the pollen filter housings so if you are lucky you can fish them out through there. If you can't, just try winding the fan up to full and leaving it, it will soon get spat out into the trunking.....

When you reconnect a battery it will stay in the state that it was in when it was disconnected, so if it was unlocked when you took it off, it will stay unlocked. It is only if it was locked when the battery was disconnected (or went flat) that it will immediately lock itself again. Windows not set is normal. The window position is stored in memory and by disconnecting the battery that has wiped the memory so they need to be set again.

The rattling noise may be normal. There's a small spring loaded weight in the drive from the locking motor which will rattle.

I'd be up for lending a hand at a summer camp if one happens but July is pretty busy for me too (as we'll be moving house) so August would be better.

The thing that fails on them is the 3 microswitches. They all switch to ground (black wire) so you can test each one of those with a meter. Earlier cars had three individual switches that could be changed fairly easily but the later ones have three in one block that makes things a bit more difficult.

StrangeRover wrote:

I've put a new Rad in it, and the Water pump was done around 1 year before i bought it..

The seller told me exactly the same when I bought the SE. Unfortunately he'd fitted Britpart so the water pump started leaking after 2,000 miles and the radiator not much longer afterwards......

Also, I forgot to mention the most important thing to look after, the cooling system. Deal with any leaks immediately, make sure the water pump is perfect (if not, replace if with an Airtex one, definitely not a Britpart) and the same goes for the radiator. Overheating the engine is a sure way of killing it.

125k? Barely run in, I'm at 359k on a 98 4.0 litre on LPG. Like anything else, look after it and it will look after you. To answer your questions:

Colour isn't so much rare as wasn't that popular so there aren't many about in that colour.
Unlike the RRC the P38 does not rot away in front of your eyes. Externally the only place you will find rot is on the rear wheel arches, front lip of the bonnet and bottom edge of the tailgate. Underneath, unless they have lived somewhere harsh (like near the sea), rot is very rare except, as you have noticed, the rear bumper mounts.
GEMS signifies and engine fitted with the Lucas Sagem Generic Engine Management System and used up until the 99 model year, recognisable bu the boxy intake plenum. Thor has the Bosch engine management (no idea where the name came from) and the bunch of bananas intake manifold. This gives a longer inlet tract so improved bottom end torque.
Trim levels vary greatly and seemed to change about as often as the man fitting the interiors changed his socks. HSE and Vogue are both the top trim levels with slight variations. You should have just about every option going so far more to go wrong......

Headlining kit is £60 from Martrim (https://www.martrim.co.uk/car-trimming-supplies/range-rover-headlining-kits.php) and will take two people less than a day to do it.

Give it an oil and filter change but be wary of the filling process for the auto box (as you don't have a dipstick like the earlier GEMS engined cars do).

Things you will need to do are make sure the air suspension is working as it should without leaks. Air springs are £50 a corner from Island 4x4 and you can refurb the pump and valve block for under another £50. With a car that looks like it has been neglected you'll almost certainly have the book symbol showing on the HEVAC so you'll need to do some work there too. Hopefully you got at least two keys with it and the central locking all works on the fob as it should, otherwise it WILL lock you out and immobilise itself sooner or later.

The electronics are what mainly gave the P38 the poor reputation. Very early cars had some weaknesses which were sorted by 97 but the biggest problem is that nobody understood them. Mechanics deal with things that go up and down or round and round so electrics are, and always have been, a bit of a black art. Once you get your head around how things work they are just as simple, just don't let them frighten you.

Get yourself a copy of RAVE (see https://rangerovers.pub/topic/10-how-do-i-mend-it) and you'll find it far easier to work on than a bloody BMW Mini.......

So who's still going then?